We're Not Getting Any Younger
by elizabeththeQUEEN
Summary: The high amounts of black and chaos magic Lina has used since childhood left her unable to age. After so long, losing her grip on reality is almost expected, isn't it? Zelgadis, forever young and angsty as well, is headed down the same road. LZ, a bit LG.
1. Prologue

Okay everyone, here's chapter 1 mach II. Cleared up a few things, added horizontal lines, and provided the disclaimer. If any of you notice something off about my stories, PLEASE let me know! I hate looking stupid, and I've been out of fandom for a while not, so I have probably forgotten quite a few things. Let me know if you spot any inaccuracies.

Also, any nifty ideas about where this should head are welcome. I have a vague idea in my head, but you guys always come up with the cleverest stuff that I never would have thought of. Don't get sad if I don't use it though—I have some stuff planned that can't get dropped.

DISCLAIMER: My Japanese is not good enough to own Slayers. Don't even think it's remotely mine.

* * *

"I swear. 200 years of this. You'd think bad guys would get tired of it, you know?" There was a scuff of a boot against something large and wet, before something metallic scraped against rock. "I told you, I said, 'it's about time we retire,' didn't I? I never follow my own advice. We're too old for this." Boots crunched in the gravel. "But it doesn't let up. We never have to battle a leaky faucet or something easy, do we? We get 'grand high demon of the Trans-Atlantic railroad' or something. It's tiring." Lina Inverse sighed and attempted, unsuccessfully, to wipe her blade clean on her drenched cape. What was left of it, anyway. She eventually gave it up as a lost cause and walked over to Gourry. "We'd never be able to settle down, though, would we? Always off doing something." 

Lina Inverse stretched once, trying to release the cricks in her back. She gave her sword a doubtful look; dripping with black ichors, it needed cleaning badly. Unfortunately, the rest of her was dripping with it as well. She shrugged and shoved it in the scabbard before kicking Gourry"Hey. Get up, we need to get moving. I'm in no mood to fight off all the scavengers that'll be after this pile of ripped up body parts." He ignored her. She sighed and dropped down next to him, folding her legs under her. "I guess you have a point. I certainly need a short rest, anyway. Son of a bitch demon. I'm getting so sick of them." She pulled off her now-black gloves, sneering in disgust as they dripped with sticky, oozing blood. "Ugh. I'm covered with this shit. For L-sama's sake, couldn't I just go back to killing em outright? You'd think they'd hurry up and die after a few hits." She looked down. "You, my good sir, need to learn to jump a bit faster. It'll get you into trouble one day." She got no response, and shrugged. "Whatever, Gourry." She stood, went over to the pile of gore and pulled his sword from it. "You know, I think I loved you once. Too bad I never got a chance to act on it, huh? Ah well. I probably wouldn't have had the guts, anyway." She belted the sword to her side, careful not to look too hard at it. "Well, buddy, you were a great guy. I'm gonna miss you." She sighed. "But you're quitting, and no backtalk. No more quests, escapades or fucking demonslaying for you. It wouldn't be the same now, anyway. Come on. I'll get you back to your wife. She's got to be missing you." She knelt, lifting Gourry's severed head from the puddle of red it lay in, and started back towards town.

* * *

"She certainly didn't take it well," Lina muttered, looking down at the sack that hung at her hip. "Maybe it was because I didn't bring back the rest of you? Hah! Imagine me trying to get that out of the inside of that thing. You're far too digestible for your own good." She swung the sack a bit, whistling. "I mean, I knew she would be mad at me, but I didn't think she's start screaming and run off like a whiny little girl. You sure know how to pick them." She shugged, and the broken clasp on her cloak came loose _again_, forcing her to put down the sack and stick it back in again. From the top of the fallen bag, some blonde hair spilled. She swung it up and over her shoulder, and continued down the muddy road. 

The rain had simply poured from the sky the night before, making Lina take her somewhat handicapped protector into an inn for shelter. Of course one of the maids had gotten snoopy the next morning, and Lina had been forced to toast a few well-meaning town guards. On the upside, she mused, that meant she hadn't had to pay for the rooms afterwards, which was always a plus. She skipped a bit at the thought before being put back out of sorts by the squelching mud.

"If only I could cast a fireball every few feet or so," She muttered, thinking that although Gourry certainly had lost a lot of weight, he was still getting a bit heavy. "But that would slow us down even more than the mud. You're lucky," She glared at the leather sack. A bit of red was beginning to seep through the seams at the bottom. "You don't have to walk. Wish I knew how to force you to."

Further up the road, someone was approaching. Lina couldn't see them yet, but the magic signature seemed benign. Nevertheless, Lina had been fooled before, and better safe than sorry. She set down the sack and let her hand rest oh-so-casually on her short sword, already muttering the beginning words to a fireball as the person came into view from behind a spray of trees.

"Lina."

Lina grinned, dropping her hand from the sword and quelling the fireball. "Amelia! I'm thrilled to see you. You have no idea how heavy this was getting." She tossed the sack at Ameila, who caught it instinctively before letting it drop from her hands in horror. The sack fell open, and Gourry stared up at her with glassy eyes.

Amelia could not quite bite back the scream that made its way up from the pit of her stomach. Lina winced—that girl had good breath support. "You… I can't believe you… I didn't think Shylphiel was in her right mind when…" Amelia started shaking, and ripped her gaze away from the gristly sight to goggle open-mouthed at the redhead. "I didn't think you had really done it. You… You were always a force of good in the world." She paused. "Well, on average," honestly forced her to admit. She raised her hands, already glowing green. "You're my friend, Lina, but I can't let you get away with killing Gourry."

"Killing—Now wait a god-damned minute. I didn't kill Gourry." Lina slapped away Amelia's shaking hands, and the green light faded. Amelia cringed away from her. "Why in the Lord of Nightmare's name would I do something as stupid, wasteful, and idiotic as that? I even offered to give back his sword while that silly goose was running away from me."

"You… you have his head… you're carrying around his head in a sack…"

"Well, I wasn't just going to leave him there, was I? He'd be just sitting there for who knows how long." She shoved the shocked woman away and picked up the sack again, swinging it back over her shoulder. "If you're not going to help me, get lost. I don't need to humor to your random accusations, and I certainly can't put up with them the whole way there. Go back home—you have a country to run."

Amelia swallowed audibly and clutched at reason. "Where are you taking him?"

Lina paused. For a second she l looked as though she was trying to remember something, but the moment passed, and she silently began walking again. Amelia felt tears running down her face as she ran out of possible explanations. She ran back down the road in the opposite direction Lina had taken, tripping as tears blinded her. She couldn't handle this on her own. She didn't know what to do. And if she tried to force Lina to do anything, she could likely end up like Gourry. She needed help.

* * *

Zelgadis had finally resigned himself to never getting his cure. 

Oh, he had figured it out, theoretically, the problem was how one could manage it practically. Seven years after he and Lina's merry band had parted ways, he had been starting to lose hope. By some miraculous stroke of luck (depending on your viewpoint), he had stumbled upon a secret storeroom for Rezo's research, most of it dating back to when Zelgadis was human. Holding himself back only barely, gritting his teeth the entire time, he read it all slowly and carefully-- although he wanted with every fiber of his being to tear through it like Lina would have. He could not afford to let any information slip by in his frenzy.

He carefully read every scrap, every sentence. Then he spent a while drunk. He wasn't quite sure how long he'd floated in an alcoholic stupor, but it had probably been about a year. The hangover, when he had finally come to his senses, had been spectacular. Of course, at the time, he considered it his due, a physical manifestation of the pain in his heart.

_L-sama_, he mused, _I am such a teenager sometimes._

Chimeras were made by taking parts of other things and putting them together. He knew that. He'd known that all along. He didn't know why it hadn't occurred to him before that there was really no cure—likely he had simply pushed it to the back of his mind in some sort of false hope.

The ugly truth was, if he tried to get rid of the parts of himself he hated, there wouldn't be enough of him left over. He could add on bits, but then he was really back where he had started, wasn't he?

Afterwards, He spent most of his time in the tiny cabin he had found in the woods. He had nowhere to go, really, and nothing to do. He'd kill something, eat it, and then take out frustration by hitting things for a while. He hadn't seen another human…well, _a_ human, anyway, in the past three years or so.

There was a rap at the door.

Zelgadis was too worn and tired to start in surprise, but he did draw his sword before he answered. It was pouring outside—_again, _he thought—and the poor bewildered queen standing at his doorstep looked rather worse for wear. She was soaked, shivering, and miserable, and bore an unflattering resemblance to a kitten that had fallen into the bathtub. He sighed and opened the door, and she shuffled in, dripping. Despite her current bedraggled appearance, she'd grown up over the years, and was now starting to crest the peak of womanhood. After her father had died, she had finally grown up a bit at heart, too. _Not enough, it seems._

"You really shouldn't be traveling around without your retinue, highness." He reprimanded quietly, tossing her a blanket. She quickly wrapped it around herself, shaking so hard she could hardly speak. She had spent the whole day traveling in the rain, tracking the charm she had put on her bracelet ten years ago. She had been pleased that he still had it, but he wasn't as happy to see her as she had hoped.

"I—I don't like to—to—to put on airs," She managed, blushing a bit. "No one e- else as a ret—ret—"

"It has nothing to do with airs," Zelgadis admonished. "It has to do with safety. You can't go around without anyone to protect you, no matter how good you are at magic. It's asking for trouble and puts your entire kingdom at risk." Amelia seemed to shrink in on herself even more, looking positively miserable. Zelgadis sighed.

"What did you come here for?" He asked slowly. "It's miserable weather out. Are you alright?"

"I'm… I'm…" She shivered. "I… I don't know. I don't know what to do." She started crying again, or perhaps still—she had been so drenched when she came in that perhaps he hadn't noticed the tears. "I… we think… we think Lina killed Gourry."

Zelgadis snorted. "Seems likely enough, she has come close a few times before." He went to get Amelia some tea.

Amelia shook her head. "I don't mean got mad and beat him up. I mean she actually killed him. She's gone crazy. She's carrying his head around in a sack." Zelgadis stared at her, setting the cup back on the table. "I asked her where she was going, and she didn't answer. It almost seemed like she didn't know." She sobbed, and Zelgadis tried not to wince when she wiped her nose on the blanket. "I don't know what to do. We should at least bury him. His head, anyway. But… there's no way I'm can to try to take it away from her…" She lasped into silence.

"And what do you want me to do about it?"

Amelia looked up at him with big, blue eyes that he had once thought about so often. _L-sama, I feel old_. "I…I need your help. I can't do this alone. I'll do everything I can, but—"

He sighed and handed her a cup of tea. She took it and started crying again. "Look, you have responsibilities elsewhere. If you die, what happens to your kingdom?" Amelia blanched. "That's right, it goes to your sister. Can you imagine what a disaster that would be? You need to go home and stay out of trouble."

"But… But Lina is…"

"And, it's none of our business." Zelgadis said firmly. Amelia screwed her face up and glared at him.

"But it is, Zelgadis. What if she goes crazier and starts killing people?"

"She kills bandits all the time." Amelia started to pout. "Oh no." Zelgadis held his hands up as if to ward off the tears. "Nothing doing, Amelia. I'm not running off after a possibly homicidal, insane dra-matta." Amelia resumed crying, only this time louder, and her eyes seemed larger than her face. "What do you want me to do, just waltz up and—that's…that's exactly what you want me to do, isn't it?" Amelia turned up the volume. "No. No. No. I'm not going to."

"You're our only hope. And you don't have any responsibilities you'd be running out on, do you?" Zelgadis sighed.

"That's a polite way of saying I'm expendable."

"What else are you going to be doing other than sit around moping? You haven't aged a bit, you're the same as when we met, but you're acting like a tired old man. Get out and do somebody some good, why don't you? Or are you going to sit here and whine about how life sucks so you're not going to play anymore?"

Zelgadis stood up. "That's not a very polite way for a Queen to talk."

"You're not being very agreeable yourself." She blinked back tears, and secretly Zelgadis was a bit relieved she's found someone to get angry at, so she would stop wailing. He just so wished it hadn't been him.

Zelgadis shook his head. "It's none of your business what I do. You should be getting home. You are important to your people and can't go gallivanting around like this anymore." Amelia dug in her heels and glared at him.

"Promise you'll go after Lina."

"I'm not going to—"

"Promise you'll go after Lina, or I'll stay here until you do."

"You need to get home," Zelgadis said tiredly. "You can't run off like a child. They're probably worried."

"So promise."

He rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. "Fine. I promise. Now go home."

Amelia smiled and raised her fist triumphantly. "Yes sir!" She paused.

"Yes?"

"….can I wait until it stops raining?"

* * *

Later on, Zelgadis sat against the wall and listened to Amelia breathe in her sleep. He'd wanted that, once. Now, all he could think of was how much younger she seemed. He felt so…so old. On top of that, there was no way her kingdom, even a kingdom as professedly fair as hers, would allow something like him on the throne. That would mean they'd be relegated to dark hallways and corners, and constantly worry that they would be found out. He sighed. _Not something I'd look forward to,_ he mused, trying to sharpen his sword as quietly as possible. _And it wouldn't make her happy, either._ Maybe if he were human, it would be another matter. 

He didn't really want to find Lina. She was obviously off the deep end, which made her even more dangerous than normal. He'd probably get himself killed. _Although, Amelia did point out that I wouldn't be throwing away that much._ What would he be losing, anyway? Another day sitting alone in a shack feeling sorry for himself? At least life was interesting around Lina. _Interesting gets you killed, but then, that's pretty much what I was trying to do all last year, wasn't it?_

He'd go see what was going on. No harm in checking out the situation.

* * *

Lina was tired. She had walked right through the storm the other night, and was feeling the results. Every bit of her was soaked, and her hair was plastered to her face in big, wet clumps. She swiped at it ineffectually before giving up. Gourry seemed to be getting heavier every day, and the red that had leaked from his bag had then continued down her thigh. Her boot, she was sure, was full of blood. It had all congealed a few days ago, and had left a grimy, sticky brown mess. 

"Thanks a lot, Gourry. I'm busting my ass dragging you around, and on top of that you leak. I don't know why I try, I really don't." She switched hands, trying to hold the head further away from her to avoid touching the gunk. "You need a bath."

"I could say the same of you, Lina. You stink."

Lina spun around, surprised for the first time in a while. She hadn't even sensed him coming up behind her, but when she saw who it was, she relaxed. Slightly.

"Zelgadis," She smiled, swinging the sack over her shoulder. He didn't even wince at the wet _thump _it made. "Fancy meeting you here. How goes the search?"

"Not searching anymore." He walked forward, and held out a hand. The white clothes he had worn since she had seen him last were ragged and torn, draping about him like a ghost. He carried a shovel over his shoulder, and Lina briefly wondered why. "Give me his head."

"What are you talking about?" Lina asked, backing up in disgust.

"Give me Gourry's head, Lina. It's starting to stink more than you do. You need to bury it." He followed her as she retreated. She hadn't started to cast anything yet—she was still too surprised.

"He's dead, Lina. I don't know why you're wandering around with your best friend's head in a bag, but it isn't going to look very good to anyone else. Amelia is sure that you killed him."

Lina snorted. "Why on earth would I kill him? I didn't kill him. I protect him."

"But you can't protect him anymore, Lina. He's dead." Zelgadis kept coming. Lina drew her sword wearily, holding it out at him. It went _clink_ against his chest as he walked into it, scowling. "Gourry is dead, Lina. Where are you going?"

"I'm… I'm going…" Lina frowned. "I need to keep moving. The rain has been slowing us down." She shivered and turned around, continuing to slog through the mess that the road had become.

"You haven't eaten. You haven't really slept. None of the inns along this road remember seeing you. Where are you even going?" Lina shook her head, but otherwise ignored him. "You don't know where you're going. You haven't even washed off whatever you killed last—you reek. You have nowhere to be, Lina Inverse. You have nowhere to be and your best friend is dead and you're carrying his _severed head_ around in a sack." He grabbed her shoulder, and held on as she tried to shrug him off. "He's dead, Lina. Dead. You need to bury him. Preferably near here—his wife lives nearby. Remember? The girl you frightened out of her wits when you showed up and tried to give him back?" Lina had stopped walking, and the mud was seeping into their boots. She wasn't responding. "You need to bury him, and take a bath. You reek. You're covered in black goo and you likely have wounds that are festering in that sludge." He spun her around to look at him, but she kept her eyes resolutely on her feet. "He. Is. Dead. Gourry is dead. I know how much you cared for him, and I know you secretly loved him, but he's _dead_. And you need to bury him."

"I need to go." She mumbled stubbornly.

"Where? Where do you need to go? You can't bring people back from the dead, Lina. Even you're not that powerful." He yanked her back as she tugged away, shaking her. "He's dead! Lina!" Zelgadis slapped her, making her gasp and look up into his eyes. "He's dead!" He slapped her again. Her eyes were wide, and her knees started to give way. Zelgadis grabbed her by both shoulders and shook her. "He's dead! He's dead! He's—"

"I KNOW!" She screamed, shoving him violently away from her before collapsing in the mud. She clutched the sack to her chest and fell into wretched, broken sobs. "I know. I know he's dead. They're all dead. They're always dead. I know. I couldn't stop it. I tried to stop it. I couldn't stop it." Soon after that Zelgadis stopped understanding—nothing was intelligible through her muffled crying. Zelgadis had no idea what to do about it. He settled for gruff, since it was the only way he would get her to let go of the sack and take a bath.

"Come on," he lifted her by her arm, walking back the way they had come. Lina whimpered and stumbled, but didn't resist. "We're going to bury him. I know a graveyard nearby, we'll get a tombstone for it later. Come on, you need to keep moving."

"I didn't mean to let—" The rest was drowned in her sobs "I tried to—"

"I know. I know you did. He's still dead. We need to bury him." She nodded weakly and clutched her sack, and Zelgadis did his best not to exhibit his disgust too openly.

It was only about ten minutes to the graveyard, and she stayed silent as he dug a small hole and wrested the leather bag from her. He didn't open it—It was most likely not something either of them wanted to see—and put it carefully in the ground before covering it back up again. Then he half led, half carried Lina over to the nearest pond and fireballed it. "Lina. Take a bath."

She sniffled, staring at the steaming water, but didn't move to go in. Zelgadis sighed. "Lina, you need to take a bath. You're disgusting. Get in the water." When she still didn't move, Zelgadis rolled his eyes and tossed her in. There was no shriek, no fireballs, just a sputtering as she came up, but it did seem to shock her out of her apathy a bit. She started to undress, and Zelgadis turned his head, embarrassed. "If you throw your clothes over here, I'll wash them while you get cleaned up._"_

* * *

_So this is what I've become,_ Zelgadis mused later, scrubbing at a stubborn stain. _Lina Inverse's washing woman._ It wouldn't have been as bad if she hadn't walked around in them for days afterwards, but they would never have come clean anyway. He settled for 'not smelly' and decided he'd bully her into getting some new clothes later. _As if I'm one to talk, _Zelgadies thought as he glanced down at his own ragged tunic. _Lina always cared about what she wore, though. I wonder where all the jewels in her shoulder armor went? _He looked more carefully. _Seems like they were smashed out. The metal is warped beyond repair, too. She'll just have to deal with it. _Lina had always loved her gaudy, loud, and above all attention grabbing gear. Unfortunately for her, everything was either smashed, warped, burned, or dyed a sticky black. _It's not like it's my fault,_ Zelgadis sneered internally. _I shouldn't feel guilty about it._ But he did. He sighed before wringing out the last of her clothes and moved on to scraping congealed blood off of—and out of—her boots. 

Lina silently padded over to him, wrapped up in the tattered once-white cloak he had left her. She sat down and stared at the boots.

"Most of that blood isn't mine."

"I guessed." Zelgadis paused and glanced sideways at her, a little girl still, although a while had passed since he'd met her. He doubted she had been 15 when he had met her, and he knew she wasn't now.

"How old are you?"

She paused, and Zelgadis got the distinct impression that she was doing addition in her head. "Twenty seven."

She was likely adding the time he'd known her to the age she's told him when they'd met. "And what do you tell people who haven't known you for twelve years?"

"…fifteen."

He returned to the boots, scrubbing them with sand. Amelia and Shylphiel had thought she'd cracked when she'd shown up with Gourry's head, but Zelgadis considered it a possibility that _that_ point had been pretty far back. He was already feeling a little crazy—he had been a bit older than he'd let on when they'd met, too, but not much, and already he was feeling uncomfortable watching everyone get old without him. She seemed to be recovering more quickly than one would expect. It was likely more of a relapse than the first full-bore descent into insanity.

"And how many times has this happened, now?" He asked. She was completely still, staring at the water and not answering. "How many times have you had to go through this? How many times do you let yourself get attached, only to see them go again? I don't think this is just about Gourry."

Silence.

He dropped the boots and leaned over his knees, staring at the water to give Lina a shred of privacy to cry in.

"How many Gourrys are you crying for, Lina?" He asked softly.

"Enough that I should have learned by now." Lina said coldly, standing. She dropped the cloak and stood, and Zelgadis turned a bit purple before staring resolutely at her boots. She began dressing. "They never last long enough. They always die so soon." He felt her staring at the back of his head, but he didn't turn. "You looking forward to it, Zel?"

"I used to. I look at you and certainly don't anymore."

She snorted. "How sweet of you." She fiddled with the clasp of her cloak, trying to bend it back into shape. "At least it gives you more time to look for a cure, I suppose."

"Isn't one." He shrugged and began to gather wood. She followed quietly, not smelling as nice as she might have, but at least not exuding that clotting reek anymore. "Anything I managed to do would leave me with parts of something else. Too much of me got thrown away the first time, and if I went for bits of a human, I would a) have to kill someone, b) Find a lab with someone with enough knowledge to patch us together and c) would be completely unstable without the demon magic holding me together, I'm afraid. I'm never going to be human again." He shrugged. "It's almost a relief. At least now I _know,_ and I'm not constantly thinking _maybe_, maybe if I just searched a little _harder,_ I would find it…" His monologue trailed off.

Where she may once have tried to cheer him up, Lina settled this time for silence. It made Zelgadis uncomfortable.

"I could always knock my head off somewhere, or jump off a cliff." He smiled, but it lacked any humor. "I'm too scared to end it like that, though."

"I know how that feels." Lina helped him pile up the wood and set it aflame, before they both sat down in front of it. She looked over at him, taking in the blue skin and wiry hair. "Don't give it up, though."

Zelgadis frowned. "Give what up?"

"Give up your search." Lina poked at the fire a few times, and Zelgadis thought maybe that would be all she was planning on saying, before she started up again.

"Not having a goal makes you lose it, and fast. You can't stay sane without something to do. You're going to go absolutely bonkers sitting around brooding over the past." Zelgadis shook his head, already squelching the hope that rose it's tattered head at the thought of becoming human again. He had learned his lesson. Sometimes it was best to just accept things and move on.

"There is no cure, Lina, not really. Too much of me was tossed out to go back to who I was. I already explained it."

She snorted and tossed the branch she had been poking the flames with into the fire. "So you can't go back to what you were. Big deal. None of us can. There was never anything saying you couldn't make it _better,_ was there?" She seemed to shake something off—her back was straighter, and that stubborn smile was creeping back into place. "You need demon magic to glue everything together, right? Well, replace _some_ of it. You don't need to toss it all out." She shoved him in the arm. He couldn't help smiling. "We just need to find out how. That, and maybe a little grave digging." She grinned. "And besides, I guess there are worse things than spending eternity as a walking, talking blue statue, if you stop to think about it."

"That's true. I could be spending eternity as a red-haired smartass." Lina laughed and smacked him in the arm, then shook her hand in pain before glaring at him. He smiled.

There was silence for a while. _I was already starting to turn into a crazy old hermit,_ Zel thought. _Another decade or so and I would be certifiable._ He guessed Lina had at least been around for a century, maybe two. If you knew to look for it, she was mentioned in a lot of histories, and he had read a bit more than your average researcher in his quest for a cure. How well would he have turned out after that long without something to look for, losing everyone he let in over and over again? He blew his breath out through his teeth.

"I don't know how you managed to stay sane."

"Where have you been the past twelve years?" She lied down, head on her arms. "I didn't."


	2. Chapter 1

"Well… I guess that's why these woods seemed somewhat familiar." The boy standing defiantly before them brought a rush of memories that Lina wasn't sure she wanted. She glanced over at Zelgadis before reluctantly sheathing her sword. After a century or two of searching, prying, reading and guessing, he had become… almost human. Well. On the outside, at least. His once wiry blue hair had been turned more silver, and moved more like hair, although it was still a bit stiff and shinier than it should be, and would break any pair of scissors put to it. Since it seemed a bit silly to enchant a pair of scissors just to cut through his hair, Zelgadis left it pretty much alone. He tried to keep it back from his face in short tail at the nape of his neck, but the shorter lengths near his face would come lose and sweep forward. Lina thought it made him look dashing, really, but wasn't going to tell him that. Zelgadis complained of it daily, although his complaints were usually kept to a glare and a snort. 'At least,' he had said once, in a fit of loquaciousness, 'the wire hair stayed out of the way. THIS is impossible to cut, AND it falls in my eyes all the time.' The rock had disappeared from his skin, but it retained a luminescent, marble-like glow to it, and was so pale it was almost blue; it was also still impervious to normal weapons. They hadn't managed to get much of the demon out, but on the other hand, it only showed in his slit blue eyes, and in the tips of his ever-so-slightly pointed ears. He kept these under his not-quite-black hood most of the time, although it was arguably scarier to see him stalking around like death himself. Lina snorted and turned, her hands in the air.

Zelgadis likewise threw her a look, one that said 'Don't blow anything up'. Lina pretended not to notice, and Zelgadis sighed and raised his hands as well. She hadn't changed at all, although his taste in clothing seemed to have rubbed off on her a little bit. She had finally gotten rid of that (as Zelgadis called it) ridiculous shoulder armor (Speeded along by the fact that it was quite completely destroyed by the same demon that had offed poor Gourry) and she had decided to go all one color—garnet—recently. True to Lina, however, they were all different shades, and all clashed horribly with each other. Even if they hadn't, the garnet looked awful next to her hair. Every time he'd mentioned it, though, she'd found another shade to add to the headache-inducing ensemble, so he's finally given up. "I didn't realize any of them would look so much like Gourry." He said softly, and Lina nodded.

Before them, holding them at swordpoint, was a youth of about ten. This wouldn't have fazed them much, but unfortunately said youth was carrying around the sword of light as though it were any ordinary toy stick. Lina mentally cursed ever giving in and giving it to Shylphiel in the first place. _Damn fool thing to do. I could have used it better than Gourry's little midgets. _Her guilty conscience (guilty for both getting Gourry killed, then for running around like a madwoman with his head in a sack), helped along by Zelgadis, had forced her to hand it over.

And now it looked like it had been handed down. _How long has it been, now?_ Lina wondered. It was a century or two, at least. _The kid looks a lot like Gourry with black hair._ And, of course, several years younger. And less dead.

"What do you think you're doing here? This is private land! You can't just waltz in and take things!" The boy was yelling. He didn't look like he was going to stop anytime soon, but Zelgadis was obviously worried that the wrong move could get the kid killed by accident. He was probably right. She sighed and kept her hands in the air, hoping the boy's parents would happen along soon. No way they let a little boy run around with the sword of light. You did stupid things like that, and you didn't have little boys left to hand it down to.

On cue, a _Holy shit, it's Shylphiel_ woman with long black hair came running around the bend, snatching up her son and yanking the sword from his hands. "What did you think you were DOING?" She yelled, shaking him. "This sword is _dangerous!_ You can't run around and play with it like you do the wooden ones! What on _earth_ possessed you to—" She stopped dead when she saw them, dropped the brat, shoved him behind her, and pointed the sword at them again. Lina and Zelgadis groaned and kept their hands in the air. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" _So. Apparently not Shylphiel, then._

"They're here to rob us, mom!" The kid piped up from behind Shylphiel's skirts, and the woman's grip on the sword tightened. Zelgadis was sending Lina frantic mental messages to stay put, she was sure, but it looked like any second now papa bear would show up, take the sword, and then they really might be in trouble. She dropped her hands and put them on her hips, cocked her head to the side, and glared at the woman. "We were walking on a PUBLIC road," She snarled. "And your kid jumped us. Shylphiel." It was a wild guess, but apparently she had hit the mark. The woman jumped.

"How… how did you…"

"Put down the sword, you're going to get hurt. The only reason I didn't smack your kid upside the head in the first place was because I was afraid he'd try to kill us and get killed himself by accident." She snorted. "Haven't you heard of us?" She turned to Zel, who had lowered his hands in more what seemed like frustrated defeat than Lina had. "I thought everyone had heard of us."

"If they haven't, it's not through your lack of trying."

Shylphiel lowered the sword a bit, but kept the child behind her, and didn't drop the defense stance. She actually looked like she had a good idea of what she was doing, which surprised Lina. Zelgadis edged a little closer to his traveling companion. "Don't get someone killed because you're jealous of this woman's many-times-great grandmother." He hissed out of the side of his mouth. Lina bristled.

"I was not jealous!" She shrieked, smacking the chimera upside the head. She would have kicked him for good measure, but he caught her foot and she was reduced to the schoolyard-hopping-chicken stance, which did nothing for her pride. "Why the hell would I be jealous of that whiney, almost useless—"

"That is the jealously talking, right there."

"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU."

Before she could, however, Shylphiel's blazing sword smashed into the ground between them, forcing both of them to dodge. Lina spun to scream at her to stop playing around, but had to duck before she got her mouth open. Zelgadis, who had snuck up from behind, got an impromptu haircut as he was slightly slow to dodge. Lina hissed between her teeth, cast a quick levitate, and hovered just out of Shylphiel's reach. "What the hell do you think you are doing?" She yelled as Zelgadis joined her. "You could be killed, running around attacking people like that! I've killed things scarier than you at breakfast this morning, and all you special sword is going to do is make it difficult to stop you without hurting you."

"We've worked hard for what we have!" The girl screamed up at them, ready to attack the second they got in range. "You have no idea what real work is! You just want to come in here and steal everything so you don't have to lift a stupid finger for yourselves! I'm not going to let you!"

"WE WERE WALKING ON A PUBLIC ROAD!!!" Lina shrieked, looking as though she were about to tear out her hair at any moment. "In broad daylight, with our weapons sheathed, when your imbecile of a brat came running up with a sword he doesn't even know how to use and tried to get himself killed! You don't even know who we are!"

"I don't care who you are, and if you weren't floating around out of my reach you'd be dead already!" Came the reply, and Lina's face turned bright red. Zelgadis would have laid a warning hand on her shoulder, but he was a bit worried that it would get bitten off if he tried. He attempted reason.

"We can just fly down the road and not even worry about it. We can—"

"And you're a couple of cowards, hovering up there and not getting into a real fight!"

"We're WHAT?" Lina screamed shrilly, And Zelgadis was forced to put her in a headlock until she calmed down. As Lina was beating on his arm and struggling to no avail, Zelgadis tried to reason calmly with Shylphiel.

"Look. We weren't going to steal anything from anyone." He lied through his teeth, not ready to explain the vast difference Lina put between stealing from thieves and _real_ stealing. "We were walking down the road, minding our own business, when your son thought we must be brigands and attacked us."

"And as I'm sure you have noticed, he's not dead," Lina managed, though her face was turning a bit blue. Having used up her remaining air, she settled for merely gagging threateningly.

"As my partner has deftly put it," Zelgadis continued calmly, "He's not dead. We had plenty of time to hurt him before you got here, and we didn't, even though he attacked first. This should at least give us the benefit of the doubt." He loosed his grip on Lina long enough for her to take a deep breath, but tightened again as soon as she opened her mouth again to yell. "I don't even know why the boy thought we were going to steal anything, anyway."

"No one comes down this road with nice clothes and weapons unless they plan to take things!" The boy yelled from behind his mother. Lina angrily turned more blue at him. She was now beginning to rival Zelgadis in his stony heyday. He eased up long enough for her to catch her breath, but unfortunately let her get her wits back enough to elbow him in the stomach. With a soft 'oof', he buckled over and dipped a bit in the sky.

Shylphiel looked ready to leap up and slice him through the gut, but she held off. After a pause, she put the sword away and turned to her son. "You really didn't have any more reason than that?" She asked softly. The youth cringed.

"The last bandits looked like them. And the ones before that."

"Looks are not something to judge people on, young man! What if I had killed them?"

"What if we had killed you!?" Lina shrieked. Zelgadis restrained her, dodging another blow to the gut.

"Wait until your father hears about this! He will be extremely angry with you!" Shylphiel ignored Lina and began leading her son away, presumably back to their house. Lina bristled, and Zelgadis tightened his grip.

"We don't even get an apology?" Lina's voice hit just the right note to make Zelgadis feel as though his eardrums had just crystallized and shattered, and he dropped the redhead in favor of cradling his damaged ears. "You swing an enchanted sword at us a few times and give Zelgadis the worst haircut he's ever had in his life, then just turn around and ignore us? I should—"

"Shylphiel! Are you alright?" Lina looked further up the road and completely forgot what she had been saying. Zelgadis leaned over and shut her mouth for her, earning him another glare.

Gourry (at least, his name was probably Gourry) came jogging up the bend, looking 23 again, blond hair tied back and wearing…Lina paused mid-thought. He was wearing an apron? No armor at all. Whereas Shylphiel had a hastily-donned breastplate. Lina looked again at Shylphiel. The breastplate looked like it fit, and was even perhaps made for her. She glanced at Zelgadis, who seemed to have noticed it even as she had, and was glancing back at her. She took a deep breath, shook her head, and muttered "they must be pretty inbred if after all this time they're married to eachother and look that much like their ancestors." Zelgadis choked.

"Jealousy, right there," he managed. Lina scowled.

"Hey, look! We have visitors! Hi there!" Gourry's doppelganger, unaware that his character was being savaged, smiled and held out a hand. Lina and Zelgadis looked at it until he let it drop, grin never wavering. "Where are you folks from? What are you headed to? Any news?" He scratched the back of his head. "We're pretty far out into the country, we haven't heard much of the news. How is the princess doing? How are prices in town? We're likely to have enough harvest to sell some this year—are we likely to make much of a profit?" He was getting nervous, and babbling. Lina had been staring at him for the entirety of the conversation, and Zelgadis had been looking at her with what passed for concern on his otherwise impassive face. Neither of them seemed to be listening to him at all. "In…in fact, we, uh…we have enough that we won't be put back having you in for a meal?" He said tentatively, as his wife gasped in muted denial. "Maybe you would feel more comfortable after a bit of rest?"

Zelgadis wasn't quite sure what to do. Two centuries had not been enough to figure out Lina Inverse, although he had gotten better at dodging. _It's odd, _he often thought, _that when I first met her, I thought she was crazy. Then I got to know her more, and thought it was guile and intelligence. Then I think she's crazy again. _He'd finally given up trying to guess when she was going to blow, and limited himself to figuring out how to calm her down as fast as possible. It was as much a goal as anything, and he flattered himself to think he was staving off his own insanity with it rather well. Unfortunately, he only had Lina to compare himself to most days, and he admitted that was likely to skew his thinking.

She had been doing better with him, he thought. He was more likely to stick around, being ageless and relatively bullet-proof, and she'd let herself get used to that. Unfortunately, he shared a certain otherworldness with her after so much time, and it didn't do as much towards making her more human as the group once had. She seemed happier, but not necessarily more sane. Zelgadis had finally decided she needed, painful as it may be to go through it time and time again, the friendships she couldn't help but make with people like the blonde grinning stupidly in front of them.

_Okay. Stop. That's the jealousy talking._

The only way to keep Lina sane was to let her connect herself to people like Gourry over and over again. Girls weren't adventuring as much that century, so more often than not it was a young man that joined their little group. It made Zelgadis feel like an estranged husband and the father of a teenage daughter in turns, depending on how young the guy was. _First there was Gourry, then there was Jordan, then Steven, then…_ He'd like to say he'd lost count, but then he would have been lying. He wasn't exactly…in love with Lina, he was sure. Pretty sure. But after so long being the only one who stayed, and the only one who could really understand her (or so he told himself on nights when he found himself in danger of sulking), he'd come to think of her as part of himself, almost.

If Lina noticed his unhealthy attachment, and she likely did, she didn't mention it. After all, she likely felt the same way about him. They had been pretty close BG (Zelgadis had never called it Before Gourry out loud, though it remained in his head), but afterwards they had come to view themselves more or less as a single entity.

_An entity that is going to drag itself down the dark well of crazy that the Dragons finally took if we're not careful. _Gourry had been the one to stick around the longest, it seemed—mostly the boys, and they all started to look like little boys to Zelgadis, died sooner or ran off before Lina could get quite as attached to them as she had to Gourry. There had been no more scenes involving severed heads, anyway, but Zelgadis wasn't sure if that was because of Lina's willpower, the short-term attachments, or thanks to him. He liked to think it was him.

"Sure, we'd like that." He said politely, and Gourry visibly relaxed, although the rest of his family was quivering with unspoken refusal. They all turned around and headed in the direction Gourry and Shylphiel had presumably made their home.

He knew it was time she got to dealing with people again. He knew it likely wasn't healthy to be reminded of Gourry so heavily, but she would be even worse after seeing him again and then leaving without even talking with him. He didn't think he could take her sighing and staring at the fire for much longer after the last kid. _Alec,_ Zelgadis fairly spat the name, the last one, had really taken a turn on Lina. He was the most recent, and Zelgadis had finally gotten rid of the punk by deftly applying a blunt instrument to his head. Rather solidly, and several times. In his calmer moments Zelgadis knew he was going more violently insane, more disturbingly round the bend than Lina had, because he retained his reason and clarity when he lost his senses. He tried to tell himself that Alec had deserved it for the hoops he'd made her jump through, for the mental abuse she'd had to take at his hands, but it was no more than she had done to others.

He'd killed people before, and often, but he had never actually _murdered_ anyone. He hoped it was because of who Alec was, not what he was, that had made Zelgadis lose it that night. He tried not to think whether he would do it without the excuses. This new one had a family. He hoped they could leave without Lina trying to take him with them.

Lina was walking behind Gourry and Shylphiel, who were currently arguing while trying not to seem like they were arguing. She was fairly sure that Shylphiel felt bad for attacking them with no reason, and was trying to get rid of them as quickly as possible to assuage her pride. Gourry, who had never been as stupid as he acted, seemed to have upped his intelligence a bit over the generations—he knew what had happened, and was trying to right that wrong by at least feeding them.

_He's sulking again._ Behind her, Zelgadis was falling into another of his black moods. _I bet he's thinking about Alec._ Ah, Alec. Alec had been nice enough at first, hearing about them through whatever wanted poster had been around at the time and wanting to join in for the adventure. She had let herself care about him, forgetting that there were two reasons not to let yourself care for people: the first, because they were gone too quick. She'd resigned herself to that, and had let herself get used to it. After all, she'd had cats when she was younger, even though they weren't as long lived as humans. She was used to friendship, companionship, that was only for a little while.

The other reason, however, was that sometimes they were jerks. She'd forgotten about that. Alec had shredded the little part of sanity he gave her, and she was seriously near the breaking point when Zelgadis had killed him.

He thought, or more likely just hoped, that she didn't know. That she thought Alec had just finally run off. Alec had been a prick, and had probably done a grand total of nothing his whole life. Zelgadis had a lot of very good reasons for getting rid of Alec, although perhaps doing it so... so permanently had been a bit far. But she had also heard what he'd said right before Zel's eyes went red and the blood had started flying. It had been overkill, it had been kind of crazy, but it hadn't been the kind of nuts she had gone the first time.

She'd killed far more people when she lost her mind for real, the first time, before she set rules for herself to follow, strange as they were. It had been so easy to think of people as temporary that time, too easy to just take and do what she wanted, knowing that they would be long dead and gone next time she was in town. After recovering her scattered senses, she'd set rules. No stealing from people who had earned what they had. No killing anyone innocent, no matter how annoying they were.

If he just scared himself back into line with this outburst, if he could jump back from the ledge he had leaned over, Zelgadis would be fine, and better for it. Unfortunately, learning from mistakes was not what Zelgadis was good at. Running mistakes over and over again in his head, obsessing over mistakes, making bigger mistakes while concentrating on what a wretch he was, that's what Zelgadis was good at. And so, going a little crazy was making him go a lot crazy.

Zelgadis was going nuts slower than she had, but perhaps that was worse. She had ripped a swath through the landscape for a while, smacked herself back to her senses, and since had only peeked around the bend a few times. Zelgadis seemed to be edging closer and closer off the edge, and she wasn't sure by the time he really went over that he would be able to pull himself back. Sooner or later she might have to kill him, and that was going to kill her.

Other than the scene with Alec, he was perfectly rational. He hadn't gutted the little bugger with the sword even though they'd been the ones attacked. He was the calm one, and he kept her from overreacting, something she was all too likely to do. She was noticing an odd twitchiness in him the last few decades, though. He would get edgy around anyone she got too close to, which was in all fairness perfectly normal. She probably would have done the same a few centuries ago. When you found one person who wouldn't disappear in the blink of an eye, you tended to cling.

What wasn't healthy was bashing people's heads in with a rock, she admitted. He wasn't going to let it go, either, which could be a good thing, or a bad thing. She was really worried it would be a bad thing.

_If we stay too long,_ she admitted silently, _there's a chance one of these people could end up dead._

Gourry turned around to smile at her, and she nearly lost what she was thinking about. She definitely tripped, and looked around to make sure no one had noticed. Neither of the two ahead did, but Zelgadis had been watching. She saw his eyes narrow at Gourry for a split second before returning to his normal stone man routine.

_Maybe…maybe he just thinks it's strange that Gourry is the same yet so different, _Lina thought desperately. _Maybe it's nothing._

And yet, throughout lunch, and the stupidly accepted invitation to stay the night, Zelgadis' moments of narrowed eyes only got more and more common. She was stupid, reckless, impetuous to say yes—she should have refused for their sakes. But one look at Gourry's face had undone her. When he asked her to stay the night, She had said yes without even thinking, and Zelgadis nearly broke the tabletop he'd been gripping. He'd looked down at it in surprise, carefully let go of it, and then stuck to her like a burr the rest of the night, making sure he was always just a hair closer than Gourry. Gourry luckily noticed, which his first incarnation never would have done, and kept his distance, but Zelgadis was getting edgier by the minute. Lina was thankful when they finally split ways to go bed.


	3. Chapter 2

Hey there! Thanks for the kind reveiws, it makes me all warm and happy inside. I always love getting any response, even if it's only one word.

Also, ENOURMOUS thanks to my dear beta Shooby. Shooby has looked over this chapter and has pointed out my various stupid mistakes! WOO! THANK YOU SHOOBY! Hopefully there won't be any confusion this time.

Speaking of confusion, people have expressed uncertainty about Lina's age, and the timeline. Okay, let me clear it up a bit-- the first chapter, which I have changed to be the prologue, by the way, is Lina in the time period everyone knows from the anime. At this point, she's several centuries old, but Zel's not quite sure how many, and she's not telling. In the now-official chapter 1, it's a couple centuries later, after everyone Zel and Lina knew at the time are dead.

* * *

_I should have said something,_ Zelgadis mused that night as he lay on the floor of the spare room Gourry and Shylphiel had offered them. Lina slept in the bed, although he had practically had to sit on her to make her accept it. _There was a time, I would have taken the bed and let her sleep on the rug._ He rolled over, listening to Lina sleep above him. It was comforting, and he'd gotten used to hearing it again. When Lina had started rooming with Alec, he hadn't been able to sleep for weeks without the sound of her sleeping nearby. Despite this, he certainly wasn't going to stoop to pressing an ear to the wall every night in order to conk out-- after the first time, it had struck him as both depressing and creepy, and he'd made himself stop. _I'm the one who'll still be with her tomorrow, _he'd told himself._ I'm the one who'll still be with her next year._ But now, he worried. What if he wasn't? What if he let himself go far enough and she ran off? _And that thought, comfortingly enough, is going to make me even more insecure and jealous. Thank you, inner voice_. Either way, this Gourry had a family. He wasn't going to leave them. _Unless, of course, something big and earth-shattering comes up. I bet he'd come along to help out, and then I might stab him in the back in the middle of battle._ His lack of control with Alec was making him doubt every shred of willpower he had. He was no longer certain what he would do in certain situations, because he had been sure he would have stopped at punching Alec normally. He certainly wouldn't have kept pounding a rock into his head until he'd regained his senses, spattered with gore. _But that's what I did._ He was heading down the winding path to serial killer, he was sure of it, but he couldn't deny Lina anything. Tonight: case in point.

_WHY didn't I just say we had to hurry on? We have nowhere to go, but Lina would have listened. _And yet, the same smile that made him want to hit Gourry until candy came out made him do anything Lina wanted. _This is a mistake._

Luckily, they could leave early tomorrow morning. Zelgadis relaxed at the thought. So far he hadn't done anything foolish. So far there was no reason to worry. Lina sighed in her sleep, and he felt a stupid smile drift across his face. He quickly frowned. Bad enough getting twitchy about being replaced, worse to fall in love with her. He needed to keep thinking of her as a partner, and falling in love with partners was downright unprofessional. If he fell for her, he was likely to go absolutely lost marbles crazy.

She rolled over, and he quit resisting the urge to sit up and watch her sleep. She was lying curled around the pillow, a soft smile on her lips. He reached out to brush the hair from her face, and she leaned into his hand, her smile growing more peaceful. He let himself savor it for a moment before pulling back and lying back down.

She'd probably been thinking about Gourry. He stifled a snarl and forced himself to sleep. They'd leave as soon as they'd finished breakfast. This was getting too dangerous.

The next morning did not, unfortunately, go as he had planned.

Gourry came down the stairs only a little after he did, and Lina surprisingly was up bright and early. _Likely to see more of him._ Zelgadis shot a glance at her and she looked guilty, which only made him feel like more of a jerk. Apparently, Gourry thought so too, because he shot a quelling glance Zelgadis' way. He pushed down the animosity that sprang up, concentrating on keeping his hands around his coffee cup instead of the blond man's throat. _Great idiot probably thought it was a friendly man to man look. _Lina was quick to jump into the resultant silence.

"Where's Shylphiel?" She asked, playing with the cup of tea Gourry had handed her. Zelgadis nursed his coffee as Gourry grinned at her, shrugging. "My beautiful wife has come down with a cold overnight. She'll be down in time to see you off, but she's getting a bit of extra rest." He smiled at Lina, whose smile seemed to falter a bit at his praise of Shylphiel.

Zelgadis reminded himself that being angry with someone for paying too much attention to Lina, and then getting angry with him for not paying enough was childish. He tightened his grip on the coffee anyway.

He was honestly scaring himself. He'd never developed so much animosity towards someone so quickly, and usually he was fine for years even if Lina became something… more than friends with one of the people she picked up like mewling, useless kittens. _Jealousy talking,_ he chided himself, and tried to relax his grip on his coffee. It didn't start in the first year, much less the first day. _I'm probably just adding all the years she was with the first Gourry onto it. Funny. I was never jealous of him then._ Of course, he'd been childishly attached to a little girl who hadn't know what love was at the time. He had no right to be jealous now of an old, old emotion that Lina shouldn't be forced to forget even if she could. But as the awkward conversation limped on, and Lina's smile came more and more often, Zelgadis felt his mood grow darker and darker. _We need to leave soon. Shylphiel had better come downstairs soon._ But she didn't. Lina leaned in closer to Gourry, and Zelgadis gripped his mug again.

They all started in surprise when he crushed it. He mentally thanked whoever was listening that he'd switched to dark grey from the white clothing he's had before. The not-quite-black hid him better when he was sneaking around in the dark, and it also didn't show stains nearly as well. He apologized and Gourry came over, grinning like an idiot (_jealousy talking)_ with a rag to clean up. Zelgadis cleared his throat.

"Sorry. I guess I just misjudged my grip on it."

"You're a lot stronger than you look," Gourry said, handing him a fresh cloth to dab at his clothes. Zelgadis took it gratefully. "Come to think of it, you handled that pack you brought in awfully easy for its weight." Zelgadis shrugged, not wanting to get into it. People didn't judge him at first sight anymore, but they seemed to get more upset when they realized he wasn't normal, now that he could pass for human. He didn't want to have a reason to hurt Gourry, because then he may not be able to hold back. "I've been meaning to say, thanks for not killing my wife."

Lina spit the tea she had been drinking all over Zelgadis. He gave her a look and began mopping himself up anew. Gourry smiled. "The only reason you even got that haircut, sir, and let me say what a terrible haircut it is, is because you didn't want to kill her. If you hadn't worried about it, which in all fairness you would have had a right not to, you could have taken her out easily, regardless of how good with it her clan is." He held out a hand to Zelgadis, who reluctantly took it.

"Hey! I could have killed her and didn't, too," Lina groused. Gourry laughed and agreed, and shook hands with her as well. Zelgadis held back a growl. She grinned. "You hair does look a little stupid, Zel." He favored her with a sneer. His hair was in what could only be called a sword-cut mullet, long enough on top that it wasn't sticking straight up, but much shorter than the rest of it. He looked like an idiot.

Gourry reached into a drawer and pulled out a pair of scissors. "Well, the least I can do is fix it for you. Come here." Zelgadis' eyes went wide, and held up his hands to ward the blond off. Gourry smiled, and dodged them. "Don't worry, I do it rather well."

"I'm sure you do," Zelgadis managed. _The scissors will break, Gourry will panic, and it will all end in tears. The scissors will break, Gourry will panic, and it will all end in tears._ "But I'll just deal with it."

"Come on," Gourry said, trying to catch Zelgadis, who was dodging every snip. "You don't need to be so dramatic, just…hold…still--" The scissors broke.

Gourry stared at them for a minute, then at Zelgadis, who was looking as though he would bolt any minute. "Huh. Hold on a second." With that, Gourry trotted up the stairs.

Lina laughed, and Zelgadis turned to glare at her. "Oh, don't look so put out. You'd think he was going to pull his sword on you for refusing a haircut, the way you were looking at him." Zelgadis frowned. "Oh, don't sulk. We're all having a perfectly good time. He's probably going upstairs to grab another pair of scissors, and then you'll get to do your 'don't touch me' dance all over again."

"I don't have a 'don't touch me' dance."

"You do too." Lina leaned back in her chair. "First you glare, and if they keep coming at you, you do the avoidance sway." She leaned forward to touch his hair, and he steeled himself not to do exactly that. She grinned, not fooled at all. "Then, when they don't get the hint, you start dodging them. Just make sure you don't get to the point where you fling your hands around like a waterfowl and start breaking arms." She grinned and sipped her tea. Zelgadis glared at the broken shards of his cup in the trash behind them. "Besides, if he CAN cut your hair, you won't look like an idiot anymore. What are you sulky about?"

"First of all, I'm covered in coffee and tea,"

"The coffee was your fault," She pointed out helpfully.

"—AND I haven't gotten a good night's sleep because you started snoring at one in the morning,"

"Also your fault."

"I…what?"

"Well," She said sweetly, "if you hadn't been stroking my hair, I wouldn't have rolled over into a position which would encourage snoring." She didn't even smirk, immediately hiding her smile behind her teacup and looking at the table while the dawning horror lit his face.

"You… you were _awake? _And you didn't _tell me?"_

She shrugged, looking up the stairs. Zelgadis began hyperventilating. "If I had, I wouldn't have been able to embarrass you with it later. Oh look, here comes Gourry." She put down the cup, grinning. Gourry smiled at them, jumping down the stairs like he had just solved a difficult math problem. "Time to break another pair of scissors. Hey, Gourry, we--"

"Light come forth!" The sword of light lit them all in green, and Lina and Zelgadis both froze. Operating on the knowledge that getting between two men with swords was never a particularly clever idea, Lina waited to see what Zel would do, but he never moved. Instead, he sat rigidly still as Gourry awkwardly brought the sword down.

_Must…must not kill him. _Zelgadis couldn't think further—the urge to rip the man in half was almost overpowering, and he wouldn't let himself do that. _Must not kill him. Must not. _Unfortunately, he didn't have enough control left over to move out of the way. The world moved in slow motion, and he felt the heat of the blade move towards his face. _Worse ways to go, I suppose—_

Suddenly Lina was on top of him, knocking his chair to the ground and rolling with him across the floor. He was still tense and rigid, and she cursed from a sharp knock in the head as she ducked the wrong way and came in contact with his brow. Sliding to a halt, she sat up awkwardly atop her stunned partner to summon a spell, but Gourry was just looking at them oddly.

"Man…you two must both really hate haircuts," he managed, holding the sword awkwardly, trying to keep it away from all surfaces. The two mages stared at him as though he had grown antlers, before Lina finally found her voice. Zelgadis hastily covered his too sensitive ears in preparation for Lina's anger at close range.

"YOU COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!" She shrieked, smacking the blonde in the head. "What the hell were you thinking? Did you think that suddenly pulling a sword on a couple of adventurers was a clever idea? Did you think that coming down the stairs with the Sword of Light that you obviously don't know how to use wouldn't freak us out a little bit? Give me that," She snapped, yanking the blade from his startled grip. She stalked over to Zelgadis, who had stood up and sat back in his chair. She grabbed his hair and viciously slashed a handful off before yanking another chunk. Zelgadis stifled his complaints, but thought it was a bit unfair that he was being punished for Lina's inability to take her anger out on Gourry.

"And you! What the hell were you thinking, sitting there while someone came at you with a sword? What is your goddamned problem? Gourry could have sliced you in two, and you would have sat there like the idiot you are, not moving a muscle!" He glared at her, but she only yanked his head forward to get at the back. "That was without a doubt one of the stupidest things I have ever witnessed you do, and that INCLUDES the time you forgot your blade was double sided!" She continued to chop at his hair, yanking his head into painful positions as she berated him. He tried not to move otherwise—she was angry, and while she would undoubtedly apologize later, that wouldn't make him feel better if he lost an ear now. She finished, spinning back to glare at Gourry. Shylphiel had come down the stairs behind him, looking like she wanted to leap forward to kill Lina and run away at the same time.

"What are you--" She began, but Lina cut her off.

"You!" Lina was in a towering anger now, and her voice made them all cringe. Zelgadis was getting a bit worried. Although Lina was not known for her hold on her temper, she was overreacting a bit, even for her. "You think this is a toy?" She shrieked, shaking the sword at the raven haired beauty. Said beauty shrank back, and Gourry moved to stand in front of her. Lina shook her head in disgust. "You think this is a funny looking sword? You think this is safe to leave out like a novelty, letting your children get their hands on it and go running around attacking people? This is dangerous! This isn't some convenient tool for cutting hair!" Her voice was getting higher pitched, and no one was suicidal enough to point out that she had just cut Zelgadis' hair with it moments ago. "You don't deserve this blade! You are going to get yourself and your family killed, and you're going to go down wondering what on earth happened. I'm taking it." Shylphiel and Gourry both gasped and reached out, but Lina slapped their hands away.

"Is it the money? It seems to be all about the bandits to you. Well here," She reached into her cloak and pulled out a bag of gold, likely more than the small farming family made in a generation. Several generations. Zelgadis did not point out that the Sword of Light was worth at least a hundred times that—it didn't seem like the time. She flung it into Gourry's chest, knocking the breath from him and slamming him into his wife. "Take some money. You're a danger to yourself and others with this thing, and I'm sorry I ever gave it back to your stupid family, to your stupid wife and your stupid children." She spun, grabbing Zelgadis by the front of his shirt and dragging him from the house.

Shylphiel darted forward. "Wait!" She screamed, "Wait! Without that sword we can't fight the--"

She was cut off by a roar that nearly deafened them, and the four all turned to an enourmous black…_thing_ with red glowing eyes, dripping fangs and several wicked looking arms ending in claws. Its head was level with the roof of the two-story house, and looked like an enormous cross between an ape and a spider, swinging on two bulky appendages while the more slender ones slashed the air. Zelgadis' jaw dropped. _How did it show up so fast? Why didn't we hear it before? _

The creature moved to stab at Lina, the one standing closest, but was startled when she ran forward instead of away, leaping up to slice it lengthwise all the way up its arm. The bone splintered grotesquely as the green blade slid through it, and the monster shrieked and leapt away, spraying ichor. It knocked her aside with one of the other eight or so, and Zelgadis ran to her only to get one he hadn't seen right in the gut. The wind was knocked from him, but the claws skittered off his chest and he leapt forward with a painfully muttered spell and sword swinging. The monster screamed, all uninjured limbs swinging in different directions. Lina was hit by a backswing, and she crashed into a tree, falling limply to the ground.

_Something this big shouldn't be this quick_, Zelgadis thought, breathing heavily as he and the beast looked at each other. Then it moved forward, and Zelgadis couldn't dodge in time—one of the arms sliced through his shirt and swung him to the ground. The talons couldn't break the skin, but it could crush the organs inside. He felt a few ribs snap, and he was almost glad he didn't have the breath to say a spell, because he didn't have the breath to scream like a little girl as they ground into his lungs, either. He struggled and tried to get the leverage to swing his sword, but another talon swung down and crushed the bone right above his elbow.

He heard a scream that he thought may have been Shylphiel, _hopefully it wasn't me, _and suddenly he was showered with a deluge of sticky red blood. It burned where it got in his eyes, and he tasted the sour, salty slime as the pressure on his chest eased and he tried to breathe. He spat out what he could, only to have his mouth filled again with gore. Moving his head to the side, he made a feeble attempt to shield his face with his remaining working arm, but the blood pooled next to his lips and he felt himself choking on it.

He was going to die. He was going to die drowning in the blood of a monster that wasn't even trying to kill him anymore. Zelgadis tried to find the air to cough and failed, only breathing in the gluey red slime instead. His vision started to get fuzzy, and everything blurred to grey, then black_. I'm going to die and Lina will be alone._

Small hands caught him under the shoulders and yanked him out from underneath no fewer than three fallen limbs before slamming into his chest. He hadn't the air to scream as his broken ribs ground against eachother, but some of the dark blood that filled his lungs spilled out, making him feel ridiculously like a grisly fountain as he sucked air in only to cough before it did any good. Every attempt burned, and he thought he might die from the ribs twisting in his chest. Then someone was sucking the bloody sludge from his lungs, and suddenly he could breathe again. He gulped and ignored the broken bones as his sight cleared, finally, and he saw Lina looking down at him with worry, frantically wiping blood from his mouth and eyes. Her face was covered in red, especially around her own mouth, except where tears and cleaned lone tracks of white through the goo. She stroked his now irregularly shorn hair back as though she were afraid she wouldn't get a chance to later, her hands sticky with gore and accidentally tugging at the strands painfully, whimpering something he couldn't quite make out. He managed a weak grin.

"That was fast," he whispered, trying not to cough, reaching up with his good hand to touch her face. She leaned into his touch, hiccupped once, then took hold of herself and frowned. Zelgadis felt oddly torn—on the one hand, unless Gourry had just snuffed it without him seeing, and she had for some reason come to him to cry on, she was obviously crying over Zelgadis. That made the pain around the ribs lessen a bit as he got what others, Amelia included, had called a "warm squishy feeling". Zelgadis, heartless swordsman extraordinaire, did not have warm squish feelings, but if he did, it would have likely felt like this.

On the other hand, he hated to see her cry, and he was not in a position to do anything about it at the moment, being unable to sit up. Assuming, that is, that he would be able to do anything even while undamaged. _I'd probably just stutter a bit and pat her on the back. _He was glad she had stopped and seemed to get a grip on things, but wished she could have maybe leaned forward again to kiss his brow a few more times. He pushed the thought away before what little blood he had left could rise to his face.

Lina smiled at him, ignoring the imbecile _(jealousy talking_) and Shylphiel running up to where he lay. "I killed it the same way I did last time, that's why it didn't take long to figure out its weak spots," Lina said wiping the already congealing slime from his face. "Dragon-Slaved Sword of Light to the eye, ten points. Gets 'em every time." Zelgadis' brows knit.

"Last time?" he managed, before seeing stars at the new wave of pain from his lungs. Lina touched her hand to his mouth, and he fought the urge to kiss them. _I need to get a hold on my control. At least if I run after Gourry now, he could run away._

"It was the same thing that killed Gourry." Lina smiled painfully. "You…lasted longer than he did. I'm glad." She took a deep breath, holding the hand he still hadn't taken from her cheek. "I've gotten used to having you around." Apparently having run out of sentimental words, she shook herself and urged Shylphiel over. The woman shook her head, unsure of what to do. "Well, heal him. We just trashed your monster for you, the least you can do is make sure he doesn't die for it," Lina bit out. Zelgadis and Shylphiel shared a glance, both refraining from mentioning the attempted sword theft just before the attack.

Shylphiel shook her head again. "I usually just cut things up—I never stay around long enough to get them patched back up again," she said softly. Lina and Zelgadis stared—it had been so easy to forget that this wasn't the Shylphiel they knew. Of course she had changed. Of course, after what, at least four reincarnations, she would have changed quite a bit. Still, it was jolting to see her pull her bimbo husband—Zelgadis didn't even bother to note the jealousy—over to him. Gourry raised his hands, glowing softly with a white light.

Zelgadis hadn't been healed in a very long time. He and Lina hadn't usually needed it, but the small tricks they had in their arsenal were usually all they required when they did. He'd gotten careless, he knew, and that was why he was so pounded now, but in the last hundred years or so, he and Lina hadn't faced anything that was much more than a warm-up. The long peace between kingdoms and the dearth of monsters, combined with over several lifetimes (four in his case, nine or so in hers) of practice and study had made them relatively close to invincible. It had been a bit boring at the time, but he could definitely see its appeal as he struggled to breathe without ripping his lungs more than they were.

Apparently healing had changed in the past few centuries. Zelgadis was used to feeling it wipe the pain away with a fuzzy numbness as the bones knit and tissues mended, but it felt more like Gourry had poured molten lead into the crushed bones and started driving in spikes. He would have doubted the true nature of the spell, if he hadn't felt the bones sliding into place under the torn muscle as they healed.

_I will not scream._ He grit his teeth, flung his head back, and the poisonous ichor that had worked their way into his stomach and lungs was forced up and out again, blood filling his mouth and streaming from his eyes. He caught a red-tinged glimpse of Lina, holding his head in her lap and wiping away blood from his face, looking more helpless than he had seen her in a very long time. He grimaced. _I'm not as good at hiding pain as I once was, it seems. _He steeled himself and lay very still as he felt his lungs reform. Painfully. _That…that really hurts, though._

Lina had curled her body half around him as he healed, as though trying to shield him, as he wept blood and nearly broke his jaw to keep from screaming. When it finally ended, his rigid body went limp, and he would have caused himself further injury if Lina hadn't caught his head before it smacked back down onto the stone beneath it. He was out like a light.

Lina looked up into Gourry's smile. She paused, and hesitantly returned it with an odd half smile of her own. If Zelgadis had been conscious, Gourry would have been dead. If Shylphiel had been in a position to see her face, Lina may have been dead as well. "Um…" She finally mumbled sheepishly, "Here's your sword back."


	4. Chapter 3

While Gourry cleared the area (although after the healing Lina was surprised he had the strength left for it), Shylphiel and Lina awkwardly manhandled Zelgadis into the guest room and onto the bed. They knocked him against a few things, but Lina assured the other woman that he wouldn't take any damage from it. Finally, though, he was stripped, sponged off, and lying on top of the crisply made covers as Lina took a much-needed bath.

_At least his time I didn't walk around in it for a week._ Lina thought, scrubbing at her hair. Last time the stink had never come out, and she'd had to chop it all off. She liked short hair, but she thought long hair looked better on her, and she was vain enough to suffer through dealing with it every day on the road in order to look her best. She hoped she'd get all the blood out before the reek seeped in, but when she brought it to her face, she could still smell the monster that killed Gourry and had almost killed Zelgadis. She shuddered at the thought. _Gotta be faster._ What if they _had_ managed to find Zel's cure? Fat lot of good it would have done him. He'd have been dead before he could enjoy it too terribly much. After that… thing, he would have been a perforated mess, if he were in one piece at all.

What the hell was it, anyway? She'd killed it before, in around the same area, but apparently it hadn't stayed down. How long would this one stay dead? Was it even the same monster? Shylphiel had looked surprised when the thing came straight at them, as though she expected the light sword to drive it away immediately. Of course, Lina hadn't given it much time to run away. Perhaps it would have if she hadn't been so proactive.

Or perhaps it would have ripped her to shreds. Lina shook her head and decided she needed more information, and lucky her, Shylphiel was sitting downstairs all ready to talk. Lina tossed on the hand-me-downs Shylphiel had left for her. Hopefully her clothes would come out reasonably not-smelly—she didn't want to be stuck in these for long. She shrugged; at least they were clean. She headed downstairs.

As it turned out, the conversation was stilted and uncomfortable. Shylphiel made several of what she obviously presumed to be pointed remarks, but Lina found them impossible to follow, and covered with a confused smile and a change of subject, hiding behind yet another cup of tea. She tried to steer the younger woman towards the matter of a huge monster showing up entirely at random in the middle of breakfast, but Shylphiel refused to cooperate. Finally, Lina flung her hands up in frustration, making Shylphiel move towards her now-restored sword of light.

"What? What are you trying to say?" Lina asked, exasperated. "I have no idea what you have been babbling on about. You keep saying things with a snide look on your face, but I can't for the life of me figure out what they mean. Either you're angry at me for something I don't know about, or your breakfast is bidding to make a reappearance and you should find a sink." Shylphiel only looked angrier, but didn't volunteer any information. Instead, she stood and moved to the window, looking out to watch her husband cheerfully carting off bits of monster. If he kept insisting on doing it himself, he was going to be about it all day, but Lina was never one to accept work if she didn't have to. "Look, I'm trying to figure you out, I really am, but I'm a bit distracted by the whole monster slaying incident. If you could see your way to--"

"How long?" Shylphiel bit out suddenly, spinning around to glare at the redhead. Lina blinked.

"How… How long what?" She managed, as Shylphiel stalked back to the table and looked liable to strangle Lina with her bare hands. On anyone else, Lina wouldn't have been phased, but the look of fury on Shylphiel's features was so foreign that Lina was taken aback. _Not the same Shylphiel I knew,_ she reminded herself, feeling a bit sick.

"How long have you been… Been…" Shylphiel ground her teeth and shook her head as if to clear it. "How long have you been seeing my husband?" Lina stared, and Shyphiel laughed humorlessly. "Don't think it wasn't obvious. You're as open as a book. It was clever of Gourry to keep you away from me, because there's no way you can hide the way you glow every time he smiles at you," She gripped the table almost as franticly as Zelgadis had, and Lina was sure she'd get splinters if she kept it up. "I bet if my son hadn't caught you on your way out, I never would have found out. Well?" She moved towards Lina, who was sitting with her mouth open. "How long has it been? How long?" She raised a hand to strike her, but was jerked nearly off her feet when she failed to bring it down.

Both women looked up at Zelgadis, clad in another set of old farm clothes (_probably from the same person,_ Lina thought bitterly) stonily gripping Shylphiel by the wrist. She tried to jerk away, but he didn't budge, and she resorted to beating him with her free hand instead. Lina glanced out the window, and was relieved to see Gourry must be on his way with yet another chunk of monster to whatever dump site he had picked out. "What are you, anyway?" Shylphiel was screaming, but she already seemed to be running out of steam. She slumped, choking back tears in vain. "Her pet monster? Her dog? You follow her around like a puppy, is she… sleeping with you _and_ my husband? I…You are…" She trailed off, hanging limply from Zelgadis' grip, her dark hair obscuring her face as she fell into sobs. If she had been any less miserable and, well, wet, Zelgadis would have worried about losing control and killing her, but she was like a sad doll, drooping from his hand and sobbing brokenly. He snorted and dropped her. Lina sighed.

"I…" She got up and tiredly moved over to Shylphiel. "I'm not sleeping with your husband." The sobs grew quieter, but it was evident the woman didn't believe her. She tried again. "I... knew him once. I fell in love with him. But nothing happened then, and he doesn't even remember me now." Zelgadis looked stony again, but Lina shrugged. They both knew it was true. "Don't worry. Your husband loves you and would never hurt you. As…as much as I sometimes wish that weren't true…" Here Zelgadis' mask cracked, and he looked ready to kill, but held himself motionless, "I'm not going to be stealing your husband anytime soon, okay? So get up, if he comes back and you're crying, he'll blame us."

Shylphiel struggled to her feet, wiping her eyes, and Lina felt another pang of jealousy in the pit of her stomach when a splash of water later the swordswoman looked as though she hadn't shed a tear. When Lina cried (like she had when she thought Zelgadis had gone the same way Gourry had), her eyes got all swollen and her nose turned red. Even now, after a nice bath with lots of careful scrubbing, her eyes were a bit puffy, although her nose had turned back to its normal nose-color. She looked over at Zelgadis, now sitting silently in a chair drinking _her _tea, looking as sedate as he ever had.

"What are you doing up, anyway?" She asked, and he raised an eyebrow in reply. "You just took what looked like the most painful healing I've ever seen, after having your insides set to puree by that thing. You should be upstairs resting."

He shrugged. "Not much rest to be had with the two of you fighting like cats." Lina glared. "I thought I'd see what the fuss was about." He returned his attention to her tea, and she got the distinct feeling that she was being ignored. She snorted. Fine. She turned to Shylphiel.

"So, like I was trying to ask you before, what was that thing?" She pulled a chair out, spun it around, and sat on it backwards. When in doubt, use bravado. It had never done her wrong in the past. Well. Except for a few times.

Shylphiel took a long drink of her own before answering shakily. "My family has been fighting it for… for centuries now. There used to be a lot more of us around here, so sometimes we would band together to kill it… but it would just come back again. In fact, it seemed to come back stronger each time. We tried burning the body, we tried blessing it, we tried everything, but it would come back just the same." She sighed and put down the drink. "It would come back in the same place its remains were, too. We're not moving the body to avoid predators—it's wiped out all the local ones—we're moving it so that it's not nearby when it shows up again." She put her head on the table, exhausted. _Yeah,_ Lina mused uncharitably, _You just succumb to the exhaustion. Even though I'm the one who killed it today. _With the sword she'd stolen from her, leaving her pretty much defenseless, Lina's conscience piped up. She scowled.

If there had been a lot of them before, there sure weren't any of Shylphiel's clan now. She was certain that she hadn't passed a single farmhouse in livable condition on the way there for at least a few hours, which meant Shylphiel was likely mourning rather than tired. Lina forced herself to let a little pity through. _I've gotten used to losing people. She hasn't. If she didn't have Gourry, how much more of a mess would she be? Luckily she has him and their so--_ Suddenly Lina froze. _Oh L-sama. I haven't seen her son all day._

_Oh god. Oh god. _Lina bolted upright, startling the others and racing for the stairs. Zelgadis leapt up to join her, and Shylphiel followed not far behind. _Oh god, please, please don't let me be right—_Lina slammed open doors, glanced in, then raced back downstairs again. Shylphiel and Zelgadis exchanged a look before running after her. Zelgadis picked up the pace and yanked Lina around before she could set off at random through the woods.

She jerked against him, getting no further than Shylphiel had. "The boy!" She yelled, panicking. "The little boy! Where is he? Where WAS he? Oh god, Oh L-sama, what if he's dead? What if that thing got him first and, and, oh god…" Shylphiel's eyes widened as well, but Zelgadis looked as though he wanted to hit them both.

"He was hiding under his bed, Lina. You need to do a more thorough search next time you panic about small children." Both women visibly deflated, and he rolled his eyes. "Come on. You're both stressed and angry, and it's not going to help either of you by hanging around each other. Shylphiel, why don't you go talk your kid out from under the bed? Lina and I are going to go for a walk." Lina looked like she was going to reply with something rather scathing, so he simply walked off and waited for her to follow.

Lina fumed behind Zelgadis, tugging at her clothes. She knew no one was going to see her, but they very obviously had belonged to a man and had seen much better days. They made her look like a little girl playing in daddy's work clothes, and she felt a little stupid wandering around outside in them. She really didn't feel up to a walk out in the open, but she supposed it was better than accidentally blowing up Shylphiel. Anyway, she reasoned, she had been about to run around in a panic after a little boy, and then she would have been calling attention to herself had anyone happened nearby. She shrugged and continued after Zelgadis.

Zelgadis was walking along at quite a healthy clip; Lina was starting to fall behind, and had to jog a bit every so often to catch up. Soon they reached the main road, where Lina really didn't want to be dressed as she was, and he headed off in the way they had been heading when they had arrived. Lina slowed to a halt and looked around. "Zel?" He ignored her, other than to speed up a bit. Lina ran to catch up and grabbed his arm to slow him down, but Zelgadis didn't stop. He just kept going, as Lina's feet went out from under her and she ended up being towed along like an oversized doll. She lost her grip and landed hard on her rear end, letting out a yelp of protest, then cursing at him when he didn't take notice. The curses rose in decibel as well as imagery, until finally, seeing that he was not going to stop and turn around despite his poor, delicate friend sitting forlornly in the road, Lina got fed up and fireballed him.

He was almost too far away by then for Lina to aim well, but she managed to clip him with it, and the explosion was like a balm to her frayed nerves. She smiled beatifically as he came stalking back, a bit crispy, his hands twitching as though he was ready to strangle her. Lina grinned in the certain knowledge that he would never hurt her before putting on her best pout.

Zelgadis wasn't falling for it. He reached forward towards her neck, but then let his harms fall limply to his sides. Finally he gripped his newly shorn hair and fell to his knees in front of her.

"Lina." His voice was deep, husky, and Lina felt an ever so slight thrill of fear chase up her spine. He was holding onto control by the skin of his teeth, and while she was mostly certain he wouldn't hurt her, she was no longer entirely sure. He inhaled slowly, trying to calm down. "Lina, we have to go now." Lina shook her head pouting as best she could. Zelgadis' face softened a bit, and Lina tried her luck.

"I don't want to leave yet." She said softly, and he tensed again. "Zel, I left all my stuff there—I left my clothes, my money, everything. I need to at least go back for a little bit--" Zelgadis dropped his head. She continued, encouraged. "And I should at least say goodbye to Gourr--" Zelgadis' head snapped back up, and his hands were tight on her shoulders before she even saw them move. She stared at him, wide-eyed, as he struggled to get words out at a reasonable volume instead of yelling in her face.

"Lina. I can't. Go back there." He managed, shaking slightly. "I'm… I killed Alec. I killed him." He looked away, breathing heavily and almost crushing her shoulders. She tried to shift, but he wasn't paying attention anymore, and his grip didn't budge. She bit back a whimper. "I only meant to punch him, I swear I did, but I ended up beating his head with a rock until there was nothing but mush, Lina. I couldn't deal with him being so close to you. I couldn't stomach the looks he gave you. I couldn't keep myself under control."

He jerked his head away when she raised her hand to his face, avoiding her touch. "I'm going to kill Gourry. Gourry will die if we do not leave now. He has a wife and a son, and he's not a bad guy, and I can't live with myself if I do that. I need to leave now, Lina. I need to get out of here before something bad happens, and you're forced to put me down like a dog."

Lina started visibly, and he laughed, but it was cold and miserable. "It would fit though, wouldn't it? After all, what did Alec call me? Your dog? A mangy half-breed mutt skulking around your boots, following you around like an idiot? Shylphiel thinks the same thing, and she doesn't even know us."

"He called you a few more things than that." Lina had stopped being able to feel the tips of her fingers, and her arms had gone cold. "But since when did you take Alec's opinion on anything?"

Zelgadis released her suddenly, and she felt the blood rush back full of pins. She ignored it, trying to find the right thing to say. Zelgadis had slumped back in defeat, running his hands through his cropped hair. "I know you're going to have to put me down eventually. I'm not going to stay sane much longer. But…" Lina flinched as he reached towards her again, and he frowned guiltily, but his touch was feather soft on her face. "I'd just… rather it wasn't today. I'd rather put it off for a while." Lina sighed, leaning into his hands, and he seemed to come out of something and jumped away. He let out a shuddering breath, then offered his hand for her to stand again. "I don't want to go crazy, Lina. But I can't hold on much longer. Promise… Promise me that when I do, you'll take care of it."

Lina took his hand and stood up, but didn't answer him. She couldn't. What would she say? 'Sure'? Or better yet, would she admit what she'd been slowly realizing, that if he went entirely out of control, at best she would stay with him and do nothing, at worst spiral down with him? She let out the breath she'd been holding, and looked around. Then she stared him in the eye until he looked away.

"Zelgadis." She said, her voice hardly shaking at all, "There's something I want to show you."


	5. Chapter 4

Sorry for taking so long to get the latest chapter out! I have no excuse. Thanks again to my wonderful, amazing, perfect in all ways beta Shooby! SO PERFECT. SO GREAT. LOVE FOR SHOOBY.

Without further ado, please enjoy the latest chapter!

* * *

The area was completely barren, without even a tuft of grass breaking up the circle of dirt--a full mile in diameter. All around it, there was a clearly defined line between the forest and wasteland, which told Zelgadis it must be magical in nature. He stepped across the threshold and felt the energy, old and painful, prickle across his skin and lick between his teeth. He shuddered and stepped back. Lina smiled at him ruefully, then stepped in as well, closing her eyes and shuddering along with him. 

Unfortunately for Zelgadis, she also hadn't mentioned where they were after walking half the day, what the place was, or more importantly, what they were doing here. He had a strong suspicion, but he wasn't willing to act on it yet.

He certainly wasn't going to be the one to speak first. Let Lina break the silence. She hadn't spoken the whole trip here, and Zelgadis was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. He wasn't used to the silence anymore, he realized, even though he rarely spoke. On the upside, if he was right, he wouldn't need to worry about it anymore. He wouldn't have to deal with silence or addiction much longer. He looked around to distract himself while Lina closed her eyes in preparation.

The trees' branches hung over the edge of the circle, so it looked as if the magic was infused into the ground. In order to leave such a clearly defined boundary, it would have had to be a huge amount of energy, and it had to go extremely deep. But it looked like it was relatively safe, and wouldn't power up anything that hadn't been powered by it from the beginning. It was old, and he got the feeling that the area had been a lot more dangerous before, but as long as one didn't linger, it was most likely benign. He frowned. _Of course, if one _did_ stay here too long, you'd probably go insane._ The magic in the circle was weak, and wouldn't be used again, but it was so…_wrong_ that it would wreak havoc on a weak human mind. He decided he would keep clear of it, and would have even if he wasn't on the brink of insanity. He glanced over at Lina again. She was still standing just inside the circle, unmoving, but he could see the tension in her back and the way she held her head. She should probably leave relatively soon, although she was likely trying to draw courage and a sense of detachment. He shrugged internally. He probably wouldn't have to worry about it long. Instead of standing around like an idiot waiting for Lina to scrape up her courage, he dropped down under a tree and started sharpening his sword. No sense in leaving Lina with a dull sword. Anyway, her rapier probably wasn't hefty enough for the job, even with the spells she'd be able to put on it. Lina winced with every scrape, and Zelgadis smiled without his eyes, figuring it would give her more incentive.

Finally she turned around, and he looked up to see that the area wasn't as benign as he had thought. Her hair, which had grown a bit past her hips in recent years, was licking up around her face, and she had developed a slight red glow. Zelgadis tried to keep himself calm. _You've been expecting this,_ he thought, slowly rising to his feet, although suddenly he felt very, very tired. _Face it like a man. You knew it would come one day, and you're lucky she chose now. This way you can leave her with dignity. Without possibly hurting her in the process. _He tried to smile, and found it wasn't as hard as he'd thought it would be. There were too many things, even now, to smile about when it came to Lina. He refused to back away from the treacherous thoughts now; he wouldn't have to deal with them much longer, and he might as well be at peace with himself when he went.

Lina seemed to take courage from the smile, and inhaled softly. Her hair picked up in a wind that didn't make it across the border, and Zelgadis thought that she looked more like the angel of death than he had expected._L-sama,_ he mused, surprising himself,_ I am _still _a melodramatic teenager, even after two centuries or so._ If Lina noticed his wry grin, she didn't show any sign of it. Likely, she was too focused on her own internal battle. _I wish this were easier for you,_ he thought, smiling encouragingly at her. She smiled back, but it didn't make it to her eyes.

"This," she began, gesturing vaguely at the barren land behind her, "This is where I killed my first true love. I've had a few, but he was the first." She smiled sadly and turned back to look at the mile of dirt. The miasma of pain suddenly made sense. "This is also where I first went absolutely, completely insane. Where I turned into a lot worse than the dra-matta. This is where 'enemy of all who lived' started. It doesn't mean quite the same thing now." She shrugged, and turned back to Zelgadis. "I was too crazy to even use a spell. I just opened up and raw power came out." She sighed, and for the first time since he had met her, she looked her age. "And it all went into him."

She grinned. It was not a happy grin. "After that, I went around killing everything. Men, women," She swallowed. "Children. If I wasn't happy about something, I destroyed it, no questions asked. It's not like humans lived very long. They'd be dead in a few years anyway." Lina took a deep breath. "No one who cared was strong enough at the time to put me down. I was…I was a monster." She shuddered again, and the red glow about her grew stronger. She covered her eyes for a moment, then looked back up.

Zelgadis was getting a little nervous. It was one thing making yourself a little crazy in order to build up the courage to do what you needed to do. It was quite another to go insane and start a killing rampage again.

"Then… I got better. I set rules for myself, and I've managed to follow them." She shook her head, and the age was gone as if it never was, and she looked a mere seventeen again. Zelgadis let out the breath he was holding as she stepped out of the circle and the light faded, her hair messy but still. "You're not crazy, Zel. Not yet. I won't let you go through that. I won't let you turn into that." Zelgadis nodded.

And so it came to this. He'd always known. He'd been preparing himself for it for a while. It wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be, he considered. He wasn't trying to kill her or anyone else at the moment. He hadn't gone into frothing insanity, discarding his dignity and raving. He would go into this calmly, composed, and leave Lina with the knowledge she had done right, but without the pain it would cost her to fight him down. He knelt and pulled out his sword. Lina looked confused.

"Your rapier is too flimsy," he explained, but she didn't seem to understand. He shrugged. She had a lot on her mind.

If he was going to die, if she was going to put him down before he took her and half the country with him, he wasn't going to go without his last, stupid, teenage angsty moment. He had spent his whole life being melodramatic, and he saw no reason to stop now. He took a deep breath, and sat up straight. "I promise I'm not stalling," he muttered, "I just want to tell you something first." Lina cocked her head and knelt before him, clearly having no idea what he was about. "I think I'm in love with you."

Her mouth dropped open, and he expected her eyes to cross with shock at any moment. He plunged on. "I've probably been in love with you for a century or so. If not longer. If not the entire time I've known you, I couldn't really say. But it's making control harder. I get jealous, and…I find myself doing things I would usually have no trouble refraining from. But I…" He risked a glance. So far, so good. She hadn't killed him to shut him up, so she must be allowing him his last words. Her face had softened and the tension in her shoulders was gone, and she was leaning forward, her hand half raised as though she wanted to reach out to touch him. He swallowed, hard. With her hair falling askew every which way, her face still flushed with emotion, she looked beautiful. He swallowed again. Maybe this wasn't going to be as easy as he thought. He closed his eyes. "I know you need people more human than me. I know you need people like Alec, people like Gourry, to keep yourself sane. So I've stayed away. I don't want to get in the way. But… I can't do that anymore." He risked a glance, and whatever else he had been planning to say was forgotten.

The sweet Lina was gone. While no less beautiful, the new Lina looked absolutely apoplectic. He could see spells glowing at the tips of her fingers, the fire that magic left in her eyes held barely in check. He scrambled back in guilty panic. "I'm… I'm not trying to change your mind, I swear. I know it's selfish of me to dump this all on you now, but if you're going to—"

"You." She cut him off, standing up, her hair flying wildly about her without even the benefit of the circle. He cringed and stood his ground. Well. Knelt his ground. He wasn't going to get scared now that the moment had finally come. "You spent all this time pushing me at other people because you were trying to keep me _sane?_ You drove me away and made me replace you with a never ending stream of stupid, short-lived_sheep_ because you were trying to _protect_ me?" Zelgadis was surprised she hadn't burst into flame from the anger, although it was likely he very soon would. "You thought I needed people like _ALEC?_ You've been in love with me this _whole time,_ messing with my head and giving me mixed signals for at least a century because you were _worried about my delicate feelings?"_ She took a deep, calming breath that did her absolutely no good. Despite himself, Zelgadis felt himself crabwalking away, unable to stand. He willed himself to be still, but his limbs weren't listening. Lina was just too damn terrifying. It was not a good day for his pride. "You... You stupid, thoughtless, cowardly, uptight, supercilious _prick_. I am going to _kill you._"

Ah. The moment of truth. Zelgadis sat down solidly and congratulated himself on at least making it easier on her. If she could be angry with him, she probably wouldn't feel as guilty about it. He mutely handed up his sword. She snatched it away, and he could swear she was glowing red again, even though he knew he was being silly.

Lina raised the sword above her head and brought the flat down solidly on his skull with enough force to hurt. He yelped, but didn't move. Then she did it again. And again.

On the fifth strike, Zelgadis reached up and grabbed the blade. "Look, I don't mind your taking frustration out on me, but could you wait to beat me to a bloody pulp until after I'm dead? It's hard enough sitting still knowing you're going to put me out of my misery without having to sit through a beating first." He sighed. "Just get it over with. Cast the spells and cut off my head, or stick it through my heart. It's best to do it quick, but I can probably sit still long enough for you to slide it in slowly, if you really want." Lina froze, and he handed her back the sword. She took it silently, and stared at him as though he had just grown antlers. Then she beckoned him closer. He stood, and she stood on tiptoe, bringing her lips close to his ear. He felt his breath hitch.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, YOU STUPID, DEPRESSED, LUNATIC EXCUSE FOR A FUCKED UP HUMAN BEING?" Zelgadis gave a manly holler and stumbled back, clutching his ears, as Lina flung his sword as far away from herself as she could. "You thought I brought you out here to kill you? Nevermind that you spend a hundred years keeping me at arm's length in defense of my fragile sensibilities, then decide to dump it on me the moment you think I'm going to off you. I cannot believe you! Do you pay any attention to me at all? Are you so wrapped up in your own depressive self-absorbed pitiful world that you can't spare a moment to notice me at _all_?"

She grabbed a handful of his tattered shirt and pulled him close to her face. "I am head over heels in love with you, you stupid jerk, and I couldn't kill you even if you went crazier than I did!" She waited for it to sink in, then punched him, hurting herself more than she hurt him. She didn't appear to mind. "I love you! _That's_ why I'm always better when I have someone to direct those feelings at when you push me away. _That's _why I'm constantly going through these dumbasses like new shirts! _I'm in love with you!_ And you are so wrapped up in keeping me safe that you don't even notice! I try to tell you and you pat my hand patronizingly and point me at some stupid hero-chaser!"

She slapped him this time. He was too shocked to move, but she seemed to feel better having done it. "Well, listen up! It's not working again. I'm not going to be pushed off on some stupid replacement while you sulk in your room and listen at the wall _yes I know about that._ I'm not going to kill you. You better find some way of not going batshit on me, because Zelgadis Greywards, I am _not going to kill you._ I am going to _protect_ you even if you start cutting a swath through the country, because I am too damn weak to manage without you there." Zelgadis managed to shut his mouth, looking a bit less like a fish, although the resemblance remained. "So you better work on not being crazy, because nothing will stop you if you are!" She paused, breathing heavily, while Zel tried to process.

"Now stop being_stupid_ and _kiss_ me, before I really lose my temper." Lina snarled, gripped his sleeves, and yanked him to her. Zelgadis' heart raced, his breath caught, and he felt as though the butterflies had escaped his stomach and were fluttering up towards his throat.

As first kisses went, they'd both had better, but it was likely because Zelgadis was still in shock after bracing himself for death and getting yelled at instead. After the initial startled bump of noses, Zelgadis managed get ahold of himself enough to turn his head a bit and apply himself. Really, all it took was letting go of the rigid control that had kept him back; as soon as the grip he'd had around his desires loosened even a fraction, he surged forward, running his hands through her hair. Lina let out a little moan and pressed closer.

The second kiss was much better. The third and forth, even more so. By the fifth, they were starting to move towards a horizontal position, and Zelgadis was cheerfully admitting internally that perhaps his abysmal string of luck seemed to be changing when they both heard something large slither nearby. Something very large.

They both leapt apart, but ran into slight difficulties disentangling Zelgadis from Lina's hair, which after being tossed around and fussed with had become completely unmanageable. They both twisted and yelped for a few precious seconds, Lina gripping her scalp and biting back shrieks, before they finally pulled apart, feeling rather less dangerous than they may have hoped. Fortunately, nothing seemed to be watching them, and they moved forward cautiously.

The sound had been coming from just inside the magic-razed circle, and they both crept forward, spells ready, to glance through the trees. The slithering had a faintly wet note to it, and now that they were listening closely it seemed to be more of a clumsy dragging sound. In fact, it was exactly the sound a very large piece of monster would make if you were pulling it awkwardly across the sand. Lina rolled her eyes and mouthed 'Gourry' to Zelgadis, who nodded slightly in return. They both relaxed, and Lina attempted to tame her obviously make-out tousled hair before they strolled out of the woods, trying to look as little like guilty teenagers as possible.

There were bits of monster dragging across the sand, alright, but there was no Gourry in sight. Lina bit back a curse, and Zelgadis let out a low hiss through his teeth as they both scrambled backwards for the cover of the trees. From there they gaped as the enormous appendage of their most recent kill pulled itself across the sand to a rather larger heap of monster bits at the edge of the trees a little ways away. Lina looked like she was about to be sick, although she'd surely seen worse in her time, and Zelgadis felt bile rise in the back of his throat. The heap was quivering, humping forward, and the parts seemed to be re-arranging themselves as they watched.

There was a sudden, wet crunching sound as one of the limbs pushed itself back into its socket, and Lina flinched visibly. Zelgadis sickly searched for something else to look at, and caught a flicker of purple light in the center of the clearing, pulsing disturbingly. He swallowed hard and squinted at the dull glow. The light seemed to be trickling off in a few different directions, but most of it was slithering towards the heap of parts. As he watched, one trickle moved sideways as another leg wriggled grotesquely from the trees.

_Something over there is calling the parts back together. _Zelgadis made to move forward, and Lina grabbed at the back of his shirt, gesturing frantically at the convulsing, gristly pile and making contorted faces at him. He sheathed his sword and pointed towards purple light, and Lina squinted towards it before jumping almost a foot in the air as the tendril attached to the wiggling appendage moved again. She glanced back at him, then followed as he crept out from under the protective greenery.

Nothing paid much attention to them as they stepped across the edge onto the sand. The cool breeze that had tossed Lina's hair playfully when he'd looked back at her didn't follow them across the border, and he felt the sick tingle jar his teeth again as he set foot on the bare ground and the air went still. Lina didn't appear to be phased (likely since the energy had come from her in the first place, as warped as it had been) but the glow picked back up and her hair grew restless again. Zelgadis swallowed and moved a bit closer to her, willing the urge to frantically grab at her hand like a child to leave him be.

The purple light was weak, more of a glow. Zelgadis jogged forward a bit, Lina at his heels, to look down at the source. Lina turned away to let him deal with it, not wanting anything to surprise them from behind. Although their knowledge of magic that didn't involve explosions was virtually equal, Zelgadis tended to be better at fiddly details Lina couldn't be bothered to deal with. He reached forward, fingertips glowing white.

It was… Zelgadis mouth went dry and he snatched his hand back and narrowed his eyes. It was a pulsing, black heart. The blood vessels leading to it were jagged, as though they had been ripped out, but there was no blood pumping from them. Zelgadis let out the breath he was holding and wished he'd come better prepared for something like this—most of his belongings that had not been weapons (because one must _never_ leave one's room without weapons) were still at Gourry and Shylphiel's. Cursing softly, he drew a circle around the heart, white light trailing from his finger.

The sounds of the monster regenerating paused. Lina drew her sword and readied a fireball. Zelgadis immediately banished the spell.

"Zel? What did you do?" She hissed in a manic whisper, trying not to make any sudden movements. Something in the heap slithered again, slowly, but neither of them were sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Zelgadis looked back at the heart as she turned slightly to see what was going on.

"I'm trying to figure out what this is—" he started, but as Lina's eyes fell on the organ, she froze and the fireball dissipated. Her mouth dropped open, her eyes grew wide, and Zelgadis was thrown back as she leapt forward, drawing her dagger and plunging it into the pulsing black flesh.

Or at least, tried to. The knife skittered off sideways as if she had hit stone, and she cursed and dropped the blade to rub her wrists.

Zelgadis jumped to his feet as the crunching, slipping sounds picked up from the side of the circle, and the writhing mass lifted itself up on five broken legs. Lina ignored them both, and Zelgadis drew his sword as they switched places. The glowing organ was likely the petrified heart of the monster in front of them, but what exactly could be done about it, what magic was enchanting it, and how it could be dealt with were questions he couldn't answer. It looked like Lina had prior knowledge, and if she thought it was dangerous enough to risk life and limb in a cursed circle with a nausea inducing monster nearby that could easily rend them limb from limb without the Sword of Light-- well, he didn't exactly trust her judgment not to do something stupid, but as the monster moved to fix its good eye on them, he figured she had already gotten them in trouble and he ought to let her try to get them out.

At her muttered Astral Vine, the monster began moving towards them, spurred by the magic, but it didn't start moving too fast until Zelgadis heard the sound of metal hitting rock and another muffled curse behind him. He had been relaxing a bit, judging their chances of being able to dodge and run away as relatively easy, but as Lina swore up a storm and leapt to her feet, the thing started moving faster than Zelgadis could have believed possible without having a single unbroken leg on it.

He spun and grabbed Lina by the arm, encountering no resistance as he pulled her along to race toward the trees, where they would hopefully get a better chance to escape. Lina was running full we're-in-real-trouble speed, and as she pulled even with him he glanced down at her arms and nearly tripped.

"You're _bringing it with you?"_ He hissed, dodging to the right and taking her with him as the demon threw—_threw—_one of its arms at them. The limb skittered and writhed, and they leapt over it and ran towards the closest cover. "Are you insane? We won't be able to hide for shit with that leading it to us--"

"It won't have any trouble finding us." She yelled back, dodging to the left as he dodged to the right. The arm was flipping itself around almost as fast as the monster was gaining on them, and they were having trouble getting past it to the trees beyond. "It's part of me, it knows where I am."

Zelgadis did trip this time, and Lina had to leap forward to catch him, shrieking a panicked raywing to drag him away from sudden injury-by-crushing. "You're telling me, Lina Inverse, that that is _your heart?_" Lina snorted and sped across the sand.

"No, I'm saying I did this." She opened her mouth to say something more, but the bloody monstrosity had caught up and they were knocked from the air. Zelgadis managed to land on his feet, but Lina hit her side and rolled painfully across the sands into the grass beyond them, and finally fetched up against a tree. Zelgadis did his best to distract their opponent while she struggled to get up, still holding the heart, but its attention was solely on his red-headed companion. It hobbled forward, and the severed leg reattached as it went by with a sickening crunch. Zelgadis shouted an Astral Vine, cutting the creature's legs out from under it as he sprinted towards Lina, who was spitting blood from her mouth and limping as quickly as she could away from the open area. He scooped her up, ignoring her shriek of pain, and ran as fast as he could.

The abomination wasn't falling very far behind, despite the greenery, and he wasn't going to be able to keep the speed up much longer. He was breathing heavily, and he was slowing down even as he pushed himself harder. They couldn't cast another raywing in the dense trees, but he was starting to stumble.

"Head north," Lina whispered into his shoulder, and he tore off in that direction, drawing on his reserves and seeing stars as he shook his head to clear it. "I have an idea."

"What's north?" He gasped, slowing down. There was a loud crash, followed by a bone-jarring keening, and he sped back up. Lina whimpered in his arms, biting back a scream, and he felt blood in his arms. He grit his teeth and ran faster.

"There's a--" She sucked in air painfully, but continued. "There's a cliff up ahead. We just have to get there, and it will keep going and fall off if we hide under the overhang."

Zelgadis very nearly stopped, but managed to keep moving. "That's your plan? That's your idea?" He managed, his throat raw and a stitch in his side. "Hide under the overhang and it rushes over the edge? Lina, that only works in books. It doesn't even work that often in books!" Lina dredged up the strength to glare at him.

"What's your great plan then?" She hissed, stifling a scream as he hit a particularly uneven patch of ground. "Run until you fall over? Head north!"

Zelgadis continued north, wasting a bit of breath with cursing and feeling better for it, until he almost tripped over the edge himself. He yelped and leapt backwards, overbalancing and landing in a painful tangle with Lina. A shriek made its way past her gritted teeth, and the monster behind them picked up the pace.

Zelgadis quickly looked over the edge. Then he sat back up and glared at Lina.

"There's no ledge to hide on." Lina frowned and dragged herself forwards. She leaned over slowly, then sat back up, horror dawning on her face.

"There… there used to be one along the whole cliff," she stuttered, staring at the open sky ahead of them. "It was used as a road up--"

If Zelgadis could have, he would have ripped out his hair. "Lina, when was the last time you were here? When was the last time there was a ledge? I have been with you for 200 plus years, and in all that time, we have never looked over this particular cliff. I don't know if you know this, but sometimes, geography changes in two centuries!" Lina looked sheepish.

"I have a lot on my mind right now--" she started, but the thing chasing them chose that moment to break through the trees. It stopped and leered down at them. Zelgadis felt what he hoped was a manly holler rise up in his throat, grabbed Lina by the arm, and leapt over the edge. The thing followed.

Lina screeched, and they both shouted a raywing at the same time, shooting sideways and slowing to a halt as the monster hurtled past them, howling its way to the bottom, where there was a series of disturbing crunches followed by the sound of something wet hitting something solid. The pair peered down at the trees below, until they heard a rustle followed by tiny slithers. They looked at each other in disgust.

Lina smiled embarrassedly and spat a mouthful of blood to the side. "I… Uh… I forgot we could both fly." Zelgadis snorted, refusing to acknowledge that in the blind panic he had as well. In hindsight, leaping off a cliff looked much less heroic and all-around dashing when he hadn't had much of a plan for what to do once he was airborne. He decided, in the interest of receiving thankful kisses in the future, that he would keep that information to himself.

Lina, of course, ever contrary, chose that moment to pass out and lose control of her raywing.

Zelgadis swooped down to catch her, but as he did he felt something snap in her chest. Her eyes shot back open, and she let out a wet scream, coughing once before it turned into a pathetic gurgle. Blood soaked them both.

_Shit,_ Zelgadis thought, high-tailing it back to the cottage, _She's not going to be happy when Gourry has to fix this. _


	6. Chapter 5

Hi everyone, sorry about the wait in between chapters. I promise this story WILL have an ending, it just may take a while. Updates are irregular at best, so you may want to add a story alert until it's finished. I'm not sure how long this will be, and it still has a ways to go, but it WILL be completed if I have to type it up on my honeymoon.

To all those Xellos lovers out there-- don't worry, he's showing up in the next chapter.

* * *

The healing hadn't gone very well. Lina hadn't been as quiet about it as Zelgadis had, so both he and Gourry had gotten quite an earful-- even before Lina could speak without spitting blood every three words. Zel's laundry list of offenses included, but were not limited to: egotism, excessive stoicism, idiocy, arrogance, and perhaps most importantly, a catching ability rivaled by most three year old children. Zel bore this all with his usual aplomb, refusing to waver from anything other than what he obviously hoped looked like manly concern. It looked more like frantic clucking to Lina, but she supposed that the idea of losing her so soon after he had finally gotten what he'd longed after for the past several generations was enough to make anyone panic.

Gourry seemed to think most of the yelling was delirium, since the majority of what Lina railed against him for had been the faults of a previous incarnation, and insisted that she lie in bed for at least a day before rushing off with the creepy pulsing stone they'd carried back.

Zel had been relatively certain that the creature would not be able to reassemble its spattered remains in anything less than half a week, but Lina wasn't sure. On the one hand, it sounded reasonable—the thing had been pretty well pulped by the end of that adventure. On the other hand, if they were wrong, the consequences were another dead Gourry.

What worried her most, however, was the look in Zel's eye when she mentioned wanting to keep Gourry et al out of the encounter.

She sighed. He'd even bristled when she started insulting Gourry, although Lina had been too angry at the pain to avoid screaming at the blonde for a fair amount of time. She'd thought his jealousy would go away now that he had her, but now he seemed to be going crazy with the fear that someone might take her away from him. She hoped it was a reaction to the newness of their, for lack of a better word, relationship, and he would calm down soon. If not, they were going to have to start avoiding populated areas altogether.

She lay back in bed. Zelgadis had finally cajoled her into resting for an hour, as he sternly refused to go anywhere if she didn't. She supposed it was a test to see if she cared about him more than putting Gourry in danger, but at the same time the idiot was twitchy because Lina was in the same house as Gourry. She sighed, fidgeting with the coverlet, reflecting that for all his cold demeanor, Zelgadis was the most high-maintenance person she'd ever met.

She tossed off the blankets, fretful and overheated, and flipped the pillow over to find a cooler spot. She hadn't been feeling well, in all honesty, but what could she do? They were on a strict time limit. If they were at Gourry's when the monster managed to drag itself up from the ravine, it would rip the house, not to mention the denizens, apart looking for her. If she was gone too long, it would give up looking for sign of her and start shredding everything in sight on the off chance that she would be there.

If she were being fair, it had the right. She shivered despite the heat and rolled over.

She heard Zelgadis come in as quietly as he could manage carrying what smelled like dinner, and she felt her mouth turn up in a stupid smile despite her worries. She stayed facing away from him, hoping like a teenager to catch him in something—she wasn't sure what. She heard him sigh and set the tray down on the bedside table.

"I know you're awake, Lina." She frowned and rolled over, glaring at his bemused smile. He sat beside her and lifted the cloth that Shylphiel had laid over the food to keep insects off. It looked even better than it smelled.

Lina couldn't waste more time on glaring; she dove right in, and within minutes the plates were all but licked clean. Zelgadis watched her with a smug, familiar smile, somehow avoiding looking sappy and managing slightly dangerous even as he grinned like a boy. Lina snorted at him, returning her dishes to the table, and made to get up. Zelgadis pushed her gently back down on the bed.

Her pulse picked up and she felt her cheeks flush, but all the pointy-eared idiot wanted to do was make her rest more. He pulled the stiflingly hot blankets up to her chin again, and she kicked them back down defiantly. He frowned at her and pulled them back up again, and she growled and set them on fire.

Lina donned the rest of her travel gear while Zelgadis hastily put out the blankets, She smiled at his slightly singed reproving glare before tossing her hair and handing him his own belongings. She caught a whiff of monster gore as she did, and frowned. Shylphiel had done as well as she could, but they would have to buy new clothes as soon as possible. She would probably also have to cut her hair—she was getting sick of turning her head and having the scent bring Gourry's severed head to her mind's eye.

At least she wasn't seeing Zel's.

Zelgadis took his things, but tossed them into the corner. He then took her shoulders and bent to look into her face, and Lina felt a momentary irritation that he was still taller than she was, despite being a bit on the short side himself.

Then he kissed her brow, and she lost control of her legs. She was lucky he was holding her so close, or she would have fallen back into bed.

His eyes narrowed. "You have a fever." He whispered, and Lina found herself nodding along without having really heard what he'd said. "You probably shouldn't be up." When it seemed he wasn't going to kiss her anytime soon, she huffed angrily and moved to do it herself. He complied distractedly for a moment before leading her back to the bed.

"You need some more rest," he murmured in her ear.

Lina shook her head and tried to move closer, but he deftly disentangled himself (easier since her hair wasn't involved this time) and pushed her gently but firmly into bed.

"I'm going to get Gourry." His tone was completely different for a moment, and he seemed to fairly spit the name from his mouth. Lina kicked off the sheets yet again, but standing up and setting the spell on the blanket had taken more out of her than she'd expected. She promised to sit still until Zel came back with Gourry. She heard him pelt down the stairs as soon as the door was closed, and she rolled her eyes. He wasn't stone anymore, but he was no dainty flower, either—she was sure he'd break the steps if he kept up like that.

Gourry's spells didn't heal anything, just checked her over, so they didn't hurt like the last ones did. Still, she couldn't say that it was comfortable. She felt prickly all over, and she squirmed unhappily as the blonde muttered and Zelgadis fretted. She reached out to hit them, either of them, but the exhaustion that had bowled her over was only getting worse. Zelgadis looked even more worried, but Gourry brightened up considerably. She'd managed to do a number on him the first time he'd healed her, and the prospect of not being punched while he did the strangers a favor seemed to cheer him.

Finally the prickling stopped, and Lina dropped back into her pillows. Gourry turned to Zel, who was too worried about Lina to be jealous, but would likely hit him if he didn't stop smiling.

"Well," the blond began, glancing at Lina, "There's a number of factors here. First is that she seems to have had a lot of magical and mundane stress on her system. You two went into the circle, didn't you?"

Zelgadis nodded.

"That's bad for anyone, but magic users take it especially hard. If she was injured inside of it, she's lucky she didn't go into shock right there. Both of you would have been addled, but injury would have magnified it." Lina winced, but was grateful that their idiocy at the cliff seemed to have been magically induced and not her own stupidity.

"It's not as bad as it seems. It looks like she started her cycles early in response to all the stress, and the spell she used earlier took what little strength she'd had."

Zelgadis went positively scarlet, and Lina turned the same shade.

"How—How do you know about that time of the month?" She shrieked, and Zel covered his ears. Gourry smiled at her like a child, and she felt herself half rising from the bed to strangle him. Zelgadis jumped up and nearly sat on her to keep her supine.

"I _am_ a healer. It's my job to know these kinds of things."

Lina gaped and lay back down.

"Anyway, with some rest you should be fine. You just take it easy, and after a day or two you may be fit enough to travel. If the fever gets too uncomfortable, some simple cooling spells should be fine, but don't overdo it. We don't need you catching a real fever on top of this."

Lina smiled and nodded, but as soon as he left, she started to get up again. Zelgadis pushed her back down. Lina frowned, feeling oddly like a living game of whack-a-mole.

"I only said I would rest for an hour, Zel. We need to leave and get started on that heart. I can't stay in bed any longer. I have to…" She fell backwards onto the bed again. Her face burned, and a dull panic crept through her fogged mind. _I have to get out of here as soon as possible. I have to fix this. I took his heart this time—he's going to find me. He's going to find everyone who's important to me. I need to end this now. L-sama, how can I end it with no magic? _

Her train of thought was brought up short by Zelgadis' arm sliding slowly around her waist. She started and saw stars, but felt him lie down behind her and pull her close. He whispered a spell, and she felt the steadily worsening heat ebb, wiped away by a cool breeze. She blushed.

"Sleep," He murmured, and she drifted into oblivion.

* * *

When she woke, her first thought was how silly it was for Lina Inverse, possibly the oldest human being in existence, to blush when the object of her affections held her.

Her second thought was the startled realization that he was still there. Holding her.

She blushed.

"Awake?" a soft voice spoke in her ear, breath stirring her hair and making her shiver. She felt the color rise a few shades in her cheeks and scolded herself for it. It was absurd, acting like a giggling schoolgirl when she had thwarted various attempts to destroy the world.

"You weasel. You cast sleep on me." Lina rolled over to hit him, or kiss him, she wasn't sure—and suddenly a rotting stench filled the room as her eyes widened and she scrambled backwards, only to have the corpse beside her reach out and yank her close to it.

Damien smiled at her, half his teeth missing, and brought a hand up to stroke her face. She shivered.

"Look," he whispered, playing with her hair. A small part of Lina gibbered in the back of her mind about him accidentally leaving bits of himself in her hair, but the rest of her was screaming silently. She couldn't move, couldn't open her mouth to yell, couldn't muster even a light spell.

"Look what you've done to me."

As she watched, the desiccated body lifted itself up from the bed, and peeled back a section of its ribs to reveal an empty black hole where his heart should have been. "Look what you've turned me into." His voice was the same as it had been before, despite the flesh hanging in strips from his throat, but it horrified Lina more than a gargling hiss would have.

"I used to be beautiful like him," Damien murmured, stroking her hair. Lina remained frozen, fixated with shock. "But look at me. Look at what you did. You've made me this." The sunken eyes narrowed, and his voice rose with him as he sat up to loom over her. "You made me this! You turned me into this!" His mouth opened wide, half filled with ragged, rotting teeth, and Lina couldn't bring herself to even whimper as he closed them over the side of her neck.

She didn't even feel it.

* * *

Zelgadis was jolted from sleep as his peaceful, softly breathing armful of Lina sat straight up and screamed. He leapt backwards, tumbling off the narrow bed and landing in a painful and undignified heap on the floor, scrambling for his sword. Lina came right down on top of him, clutching at his shirt, wrapping herself franticly around him and sobbing that she hadn't meant to do it. Moments later Gourry, his hair messy with sleep, threw open the door. He looked down at the pair in surprise, and Zelgadis managed a shrug while ineptly trying to calm the hysterical redhead in his lap. He mouthed 'bad dream,' and Gourry nodded and left.

Lina's wailing had turned to whispered self-recrimination and soft sobs, and Zelgadis held her close and buried his face in her hair. It still smelled like the monster they'd killed, but then, so did all their clothing, so he had grown mostly immune to it. He brushed it back from her face and she raised tear-filled eyes to stare forlornly at him.

Then those eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed into his arms.

He sat cradling her for a while longer before lifting her carefully and putting her back to bed. After watching her sleep for a while, he crouched next to his pack and pulled several delicate looking magical instruments from a padded velvet case. Then he retrieved the wrapped bundle of Lina's cloak from the corner where they'd thrown it earlier.

The heart beat sluggishly, purple light spilling out to reach towards the forest when he unwrapped it. Zelgadis placed it on the desk, careful not to touch it directly. Even so far away from the circle, as soon as the protection spell Lina had put on her cloak was removed, he could feel the baleful energy leaking out, tendrils of it snaking up his hands when they moved too close. He cast a quick containment spell, and white light flared briefly around it as he turned to his tools.

He tipped a vial of white powder onto it, muttered a few words under his breath, and lifted his hands. A red, translucent replica of the heart rose with them, beating in tandem. He reached forward and prodded it carefully. It was an abstract copy of the magic interlaced with the heart, a blueprint of the spells infused in the matter. While these rarely told him how to replicate spells, it usually gave him some idea of the construction and ways of unraveling it. He leaned in closely, squinting at it.

When looked at closely, it seemed to be a tangle of thread, liberally laced with dark blotches of unidentifiable matter. He sighed, leaning back to ponder the spell. It was Lina's work, that much was obvious, but he had no idea how she had managed to put it together.

Usually, when he used this particular spell on enchanted objects, the string ran in straight, geometric patterns. There were often solid shapes carefully interwoven with the power lines, parts of older, organic spells. Sometimes if there was enough emotion behind the casting, there were extra snarls that made it stronger or harder to disentangle.

Lina's spell was one big snarl. It seemed as if she had simply poured magic in until it couldn't hold anymore. He sighed again, prodding the mess a few more times before reaching forward to unravel the strands as best he could. This magic wouldn't touch the enchantment itself, but he might learn more by taking it apart.

There were hints of actual spellweaving in the mess. Here was what looked like a preservation spell. Further in, parts of a protection charm. Pieces of various positive, helpful magics were woven into the tangled mess of energy, and Zelgadis couldn't make heads or tails of it. As he dug further, the mess became a broken, torn off mass in the center, as if it had been…

_…ripped out, _he thought bleakly. He extinguished his spell with a tired wave, but left the containment circle around it. There was no telling what kind of dreams it could give poor Lina, especially in her state. He laced his fingers behind his head and gazed at the ceiling. If he'd had any doubts about Lina's involvement, they'd been laid to rest now; she was definitely the one that cast that tangle.

He turned to look at her. She was sleeping peacefully now, although it seemed that was no indication of her dreams. He let out the breath he'd been holding and climbed in with her, guiltily luxuriating in the feel of her against him. She sighed in her sleep and moved closer, and he smiled softly.

"Don't leave me alone," she mumbled, inaudibly if he hadn't had such good hearing. He clutched her tightly, and she fell back into a deeper sleep.


	7. Chapter 6

Lina's dreams only got worse as the sky outside darkened, and Zelgadis held her tightly whenever she began tossing in her sleep. Sometimes she would moan and shift fretfully before drifting back into a peaceful slumber, but other times she would leap awake screaming without warning. Zelgadis managed to snatch a few moments of sleep next to her before giving up. After that, he went back and forth between the heart and Lina, trying to decide what to do.

Lina wasn't getting better. Her fever had gone up, and her hair stuck to her forehead in damp clumps. She'd started speaking soon after she had collapsed, but he couldn't make any sense of what she had been saying. All he could make out was mumbled apologies and sobs. Zelgadis sighed, wiping her brow with a damp cloth.

Despite several more desperate attempts at figuring out the spell that was placed on the heart, he was no closer to unraveling it than before. Lina was getting worse, and the purple from the heart had started straining towards her. So far the barrier he'd built around it had stopped it, but it was only a matter of time before it burst through. He growled and held Lina closer. It was obviously of her making, but it just as obviously seemed to have started out, at least, with good intentions.

The redhead in question stirred. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, "I tried to save you. I'm… I'm sorry…" Zelgadis touched Lina's cheek, wet again again with tears, and swallowed hard. "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to lose control." Her ramblings were getting stronger, which only made Zelgadis worry more. She was sinking deeper into her delirium, and he hoped she could claw her way back out of it without lasting harm. Gourry had come in once an hour, but hadn't been able to do much to help. Zelgadis bit back recriminations that threatened to spill over every time the blonde shrugged helplessly. _If you were better at your job, she wouldn't be like this,_ he managed to keep his mouth closed over the angry words. _If you weren't such a useless, worthless idiot, she would be okay now._

He knew he was really yelling at himself, anyway.

The only upside of the situation was the possibility that his shield around the heart was slowing down an already difficult healing process for…whatever that thing was. Lina mumbled and fell back into a more peaceful rest, and Zelgadis went back to the third chart he'd made of the spell.

He kept getting frustrated and dropping it, but he couldn't help looking again. It shouldn't have been as… malevolent as it had turned out. Every piece he could identify was white magic, protective magic, and each piece seemed to have been woven well before the tangle had started.

If this was what he thought it was, and _who_ he thought it was, it shouldn't have gone as wrong as this.

He glanced back at Lina. She was curled up, her hair spilling over her shoulders.

"This was the guy you were talking about, isn't it? You were trying to save him from something. What were you trying to save him from?" He slumped back on the bed, leaning into the tangled web of her hair. It still smelled of gore. "You have five different healing spells woven into this. You have eight protection spells, four preservation wards, and even a few luck charms." He brushed the hair from her face, letting his fingertips linger at her cheek. "And if you go deep enough, there are the broken elements of about seventeen different wards against evil in there. What were you trying to fix? What were you afraid would happen?" He sighed. "It looks like you tried to merge a home-made eternal life spell with something to destroy evil already there."

Lina didn't reply. He hadn't expected her to. She probably had no idea he was even speaking.

"I'm guessing you loved him and he was in a lot of trouble. I'm guessing you tried to fix it. I'm guessing it went wrong, and you were forced to do something…final about it, and you tore the whole thing out by its roots with sheer power alone. That's where all these broken off parts came from." He blew at some of the hair that had fallen in his face from Lina's creative haircut.

"I'm surprised at you, Zelgadis. You don't recognize a mazoku when you see one?"

Zelgadis leapt back to his feet, but didn't try to draw his sword. He glared at the slit eyes grinning back at him from the shadows outside Lina's window.

Xellos tapped on the glass. "What, you're not even going to invite me in? That's rude. You should be more thoughtful. Lina would invite me in."

Zelgadis snorted. "Lina's not awake to argue in your favor at the moment, and you don't need an invitation to enter anyways."

"Ah," Xellos grinned. "But it's so much more polite that way." He poked his head straight through the glass before floating all the way into the room, glancing around approvingly. Zelgadis tried to think of Xellos as seldom as possible, but when forced to, he was both comforted and creeped out by how little the bastard changed. They could always expect the same things from him, the same backhanded honesty and slick lies, but never enough to make them stop listening entirely. His appearance never changed, his clothes never changed, even his hair stayed the same.

It made it easier to forget how much time had passed between them, but then, it made it easier to remember everything Xellos had made go wrong for them. Lina sometimes mused that that may be the point, but even Zelgadis couldn't decide exactly what she meant by that. He had a feeling she wasn't certain, either.

"I see you haven't covered the walls in blood yet, Zel. How long is the current boytoy safe, then?" Xellos grinned, and Zelgadis could almost picture the mazoku poking him in the side to see if he'd bite.

Zelgadis grit his teeth, but didn't move. "There is no one else, this time. Did you have a reason to show up again so soon after you goaded Alec into doing things he would later…regret? I doubt Lina would hesitate to rip you in half this time if she were awake."

Xellos smiled wider. "It's not my fault he wanted to press his suit quite so aggressively. You should thank me—I'm also the reason you found out about it." He turned to look at Lina before Zelgadis moved between them. "Unfortunately, I didn't come because I wanted to see your happy smiling face. I came because Lina is pouring out magic as though she has been punched full of holes, and if she dies I won't be able to play with her anymore." His purple hair swung as he laughed at Zelgadis' expression. "You thought she lost her magic because she'd started an early period, didn't you? Did it occur to either of you that if she had, she'd need extra bandages in embarrassing places? No, she's having her energy sucked out of her. You need to stop up the leaks."

Lina lay curled on her side, feebly straining against the sucking, clutching light at her stomach. Purple flames danced there, and she could feel something leaving her like smoke, spiraling up and out and away to…somewhere. _Leave me alone_. Her legs had gone numb, and her sight was starting to fade. _Leave me alone._

It seemed she had always fallen for men who felt they needed something else to make them complete. _Oh god, I'm sorry, Damien._ Damien, who had been perfect when they'd met. Damien, who she'd left when it became clear that she had stopped aging, and he hadn't. Damien, who found her a century later, changed. No longer aging, but…

_I'm sorry. Let me go._

She'd tried to fix him. They're tried to do it together. It was probably why it hadn't worked.

No. She knew why it hadn't worked. She'd been an idiot to try.

She opened half blind eyes and saw his gaping, empty chest as he reached out to rip her heart out in return.

Xellos jumped back and Zelgadis jumped forward as Lina came awake with a scream, clutching her chest, eyes wide. She clawed at him as he gathered her close, sobbed as he stroked her hair, and slowly hiccupped back to sanity. He rocked her, breathing assurances in her ear, but as she started to slip off into sleep again, he shook her gently. "Lina." He whispered, and her half-closed eyes fluttered open again. She looked exhausted, but if what Xellos said was true, sleep would only hurt her. "Lina, you have to wake up." She nodded sleepily, but couldn't seem to focus on his face. He stroked her cheek, but it only seemed to upset her.

"I can't see your face." She whispered, reaching clumsily for him. "I can't see you anymore." Zelgadis gave Xellos a startled look, but he only shrugged.

"She's probably happier not seeing me, anyway," Xellos murmured. He smiled, but didn't seem too happy about it. Zelgadis turned his attention back to Lina.

"It's likely the loss of energy, Lina. It shouldn't be permanent. You have to stay awake while we cast a shield around you. You have to stay awake." Lina nodded feebly, and he set her back down on the bed. She looked as if she'd have liked to clutch at him as he moved away, but she'd apparently heard Xellos' voice, and wasn't going to admit weakness in front of him. Zelgadis drew a careful line of white around Lina, and the lines glowed softly as he joined them. He whispered a few words, and Xellos moved forward to touch the lines as well.

They flared purple.

Far off, there was the sound of something screaming, and then the entire room was filled with a blinding purple light. Lina arched wildly and screamed, her eyes flew wide, and she gripped the sheets so hard blood leaked from her palms. Zelgadis shot a worried glance at Xellos.

The trickster priest opened his eyes, but didn't stop the spell. "Push through. It will only hurt her more not to cut it." Zelgadis nodded and finished the spell, trying to ignore Lina's screaming growing louder and then cutting off entirely. She fell back into the pillows, her eyes closed again. Zelgadis sighed.

"I'm not sure why I'm trusting you. Again." He turned back to Xellos. "You always seem to make more trouble than you fix."

"But I do fix things." The priest sat in the air, smiling. Zelgadis rolled his eyes. "And for everything I break, it's usually not that bad." Zelgadis growled.

"Genocide is 'that bad'. Rape is 'that bad'."

Xellos waved his hand dismissively. "Do unto others and all. I was but an instrument of karma. As for rape, he didn't manage it, now did he? You should have more faith in Lina. You know she's a big girl. She can take care of herself."

Xellos studied his fingernails, and Zelgadis refrained from reacting violently. It would only please the bastard, and so he forced himself not to move. Xellos looked up, his eyes narrowed to slits.

"You two have gotten…cozy."

Zelgadies didn't reply.

Xellos sighed. "It always was easier to talk to Lina about these things. It never occurred to me to ask why." He leaned back, obviously in a sharing mood. Zelgadis wished he would just leave. "She was obviously smart enough and old enough to know what I really was, but she seemed to constantly try to forget. Amelia was always shocked whenever I showed my darker nature, but Lina merely seemed unpleasantly reminded."

Zelgadis leaned across the bed to gather Lina back up in his arms. Her color was already starting to get better. Xellos leered at him, and he looked away.

"Did it ever occur to you that perhaps she'd run across my kind before she met me?"

Zelgadis snorted. "Of course she had. How old was she when she met you? How long had she been practicing dark magic? She couldn't have gone all that time without meeting some."

"Then why wasn't she more hostile? Why did she, if not trust, not immediately distrust everything I said?" He moved closer to Lina, who gave a soft yelp in her sleep and moved further away.

"Zelgadis, what kind of magic did Lina eventually use to drive out as much of the blue demon from you as she could manage? She seemed pretty practiced at it, but oddly hesitant. She made up for the lack of finesse of the spells with a lot of raw power, didn't she? Your demon wasn't exactly evil, but what spells do you think she would have cobbled together if it had been?"

Zelgadis' eyes widened, but Xellos wasn't finished. "Now imagine if you hadn't been immortal, or close to it, from all your magic. What if you were going to age a great deal the moment that demon left you?" Zelgadis was no longer looking at Xellos. He was staring at Lina, then at the heart, and then back at her again.

Xellos grinned.

Zelgadis swallowed the lump in his throat, but his voice was hoarse when he managed "How…How much of herself did she have to add to that spell to keep it going?" Xellos leaned back.

"That's a question you're going to have to ask Lina."

Zelgadis glared at him "Again, you've managed to make things even worse than they were before. Why should I even believe you? And why would you tell me if it was the truth?" Xellos floated just within Zelgadis' reach, obviously trying to tempt him into violence. Zelgadis gripped Lina until she whimpered, and he winced and loosened his hold.

"You were coming to the conclusion yourself. You know I'm right. Why would Lina fall in love with a new-born mazoku, I wonder? And why would she try to fix him if she had? I suppose it doesn't matter anymore. The poor thing has gone crazier than you have, and its only thought is breaking whatever keeps it like this." He shrugged. "As for my reasons for telling you, can't I show a genuine concern for the only friends who have lived long enough to grow on me?"

"Not for lack of trying on your part. You've almost gotten us killed several times over." Xellos shrugged, smiling like a cat.

"Yes, well, you've always bounced back, then, haven't you?" Xellos smiled. "It's darling friends like you who keep my world from falling into the bleak despair it may have been without them." Zelgadis rolled his eyes.

"You only help us when you want to get something out of it." He paused, contemplating. "In fact, you pointed us in this direction even though Lina didn't want to come this way. How far back have you been planning this? Why do you want us here?" Zelgadis was torn between going after the mazoku with his bare hands and holding Lina as far away from the smiling bastard as he could.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, look, Lina seems to be waking back up." Zelgadis' eyes flicked to Lina's face. She was still sleeping soundly, but when he glanced back up, Xellos was gone.

Zelgadis frowned. Whatever it was, they were leaving it well enough alone. Lina tended to get close to dead whenever she fell into things Xellos planned, and this was likely to work the same way.

Gourry and Shyphiel were idiots to stay here after their entire clan had been destroyed. As the world became more populated, arable farmland was getting scarcer, but surely even the best land wasn't worth all this. If he ran them out, there would be nothing here Lina needed to protect, and she'd see the benefit of leaving and forgetting about whatever was after her.

Getting rid of Gourry was becoming more and more attractive. He had a wife and child, but that was only two extra people. They were likely to die here anyway, so if he were to choose a more… permanent way of cleaning up the problem, he'd only be speeding up the inevitable. They're be reincarnated, after all. He wouldn't do them any permanent damage. They'd probably be happier somewhere else, anyway.

Lina was sleeping like the dead, which meant if he hurried, he could get everything straightened out before she was even lucid. She wouldn't even know. He'd tell her they had (wisely) packed up and left, and then the two of them would hightail it for somewhere as far away from Lina's former lover as possible.

Zelgadis stood, pulled on his boots and buckled his sword into place. Most humans lasted such a short time, anyway. They bred like ants, and three less wouldn't change anything. He wasn't making a big change, just a little alteration in a complicated situation.

He'd made it to the door, actually had his hand on the knob, before he fell over himself scrambling away from it.

He ripped off the sword and flung it away from him, dropped into bed next to Lina and held her close until all he could see was the red of her hair, and let her presence seep into his thoughts. He pushed the cold, reptilian killer as far away as possible, breathed her in and searched for anything to think about but what he'd been about to do.

He'd been about to murder an innocent family in cold blood. A family that had not only done nothing to him, but had helped him, sheltered and fed him, healed both him and Lina.

There was nothing to excuse it. He'd been about to walk downstairs and calmly slaughter Gourry, Shylphiel, even their son—a _child_ for the gods' sakes—and he didn't even have the fury to blame it on. His thoughts had been cold, clear, and he could almost feel them beneath his consciousness, slipping smoothly into place behind the walls he'd frantically been trying to build against them.

He had finally gone crazy. It had finally reached the point where it had grown into something he couldn't excuse or ignore. He buried his face in the crook of Lina's neck. He didn't want to lose her, but he was going to if he didn't control himself. He would drag her along with him, unable to stop himself, and she had already let him know she wouldn't stop him if he did. She would get pulled down with him, and if he did that, they were going to end up either dead or imprisoned when enough people got enough together to stop them. Of course, they would likely kill off a few countries worth of people before it came to that.

But he wasn't strong enough to leave her. How could he? She'd only follow him, and anyway he was too selfish to let go. Now that he had the part of her he'd coveted for centuries, there was nothing that could make him give it up.

He hadn't realized that he'd been mumbling to himself until Lina opened her eyes and lifted a hand to his cheek.

"If you go around muttering about killing people, Zel, folks are going to think you've lost a cog in there somewhere," she said softly, and his eyes drifted shut of their own accord as he gave himself up to her touch. She leaned forward to kiss him, pulling him gently against her. He let her work her fingers though his tangled hair, let her hold him like a child while he could only gasp and clutch at her hands.

He felt tears on his cheeks and prayed that they were Lina's. His hands shook even as he tried to still them, his breath came short and fast, and his teeth chattered as she pulled the blankets weakly about them. He lie curled against her as she sat up on the pillows, acting like the idiot he was. He'd turned into a monster, and by all rights she should be running screaming in the other direction as fast as her feet would take her, but she lay still, stroking his hair and whispering senseless words into his ear.

"You didn't stop me," he managed, his eyes tightly shut against what he might see in her face. "You knew where I was going. You knew what I was going to do. You didn't say anything." He choked and swallowed loudly. It only seemed to make it worse.

Part of him was disgusted; was this what he'd become? A murderous, soulless villain one moment, a blubbering child the next? And Lina had seen it. She'd known what he was thinking because he'd gone so far around the bed that he was muttering his every thought to himself like a psychopath.

"Why didn't you stop me?"

"If I stop you while you can still stop yourself, it will only make it worse," she murmured into his hair. He moved away, and she let him pull his dignity back about himself in tattered rags. He turned his head while he tried to think of a way to wipe the salt from his face without looking like a schoolboy with a bruised knee.

"Once you can't stop yourself, well, there won't really be anything I can do, will there?" She continued. "You're at least as smart as I am. You're a lot sneakier than I am. Even if I were able to talk you out of something, you'd just find a way to do it without my knowing. So I didn't try."

She had a point. He finally settled for smearing his cheeks with the heel of his hand and turned back to face her.

"I was about to kill Gourry. I was about to murder him in his bed. If you stayed with me after that, it would have ended in more deaths than I can count, yours being one of them, and you know it. You also know I couldn't raise a hand against you. You could have stopped me, permanently." His eyes locked with hers, and she smiled sadly.

"Why didn't you stop me?" He heard the pleading in his voice and couldn't stop it. "I can't control this. If you don't stop me, we're both going to die anyway, and we're going to take people with us."

She inhaled and looked ashamed of herself.

"Because I'm too selfish to do what's best for you." Her fingers played nervously with the sheets, and her head fell to rest against his. "Because I love you too much to kill you even though I know it's what I should do. I'd let you kill Gourry, and I'd let you kill his family. I'd even try to protect you from everything that would try to stop you for me." She swallowed, and this time he knew it was her tears that fell on his face. He wasn't happy about it.

"Because I can't bear to lose you." She whispered into his hair. He shivered and gripped her shirt to keep from crushing her. She took a deep breath.

"I need to tell you what happened the fist time I was here," she stammered. "You deserve to know. You need to know what I did."

"I know you made him this." They both knew what he meant. She nodded miserably.

"I loved him," she whispered, and Zelgadis stiffened. _He's long gone,_ he thought scathingly. _He's not exactly a rival anymore._ He forced himself to relax and pulled away enough to see her face. She looked broken and guilty.

"I loved Damien more than anyone I'd ever known, but I wasn't getting any older, and he was. I finally made myself leave him, tried to let him have a normal life, but in order to keep me, he made deals with people he shouldn't have. He gained immortality, but he lost too much." She closed her eyes. Zelgadis knew where this was going.

"He became a mazoku." His voice was tight in his throat, and the words barely made it out. She nodded.

"They made him do things that he…would rather not have done," she continued, "but he told himself couldn't say no. Maybe he couldn't. I don't know."

"Many, many years later, he found me again, and begged me to save him from himself. I agreed."

She licked her lips and looked away. "It didn't work. There wasn't enough of him left to save from it, and every time he'd done as commanded, he'd lost more of himself. I tried to push it out by adding more power. I pushed until all I had left was myself, and then I couldn't stop." She let out a strangled sob and hugged her shoulders, drew up her knees and shivered. Her eyes were tightly shut, and he reached out to touch her. She leaned into his embrace.

"I was close. I was so close. If I pushed just a little more, if I added just a little more of myself, I would have been able to push it all out." She opened her eyes. "But by then, there wasn't enough of me left. If I gave any more, if I pushed any more, I wouldn't…" She took a deep breath.

"In the end…I chose me."

Zelgadis was without words. He could only hold her, could only murmur soundlessly against her hair as she let the story spill from deep inside her.

"I tried to pull back. I tried to yank myself out, but he wouldn't let go. I panicked. I reached out and… He lunged at me, and… I pulled him apart." She took a deep breath. "Then I set it all on fire and ran as fast as I could.

"In the end, I never loved him enough to give up myself. After that, if you go back far enough in the history books, you'll find someone who killed a lot of people over a very long period of time. Then I pulled myself together and made rules for myself to keep me from losing it again." She shook him off and took his head in her hands, forced him to look at her.

"I'd give it up. I'd break every rule that keeps me from losing myself, and I would do it immediately, with no hesitation. We would die, and we would die ugly deaths. We'd cause far more ugly deaths than I care to think about, and we would be as far from human as we could get when it finally ended." She shuddered, but she didn't stop. Zelgadis tried to say something, anything, but the words stuck in his throat. Lina trailed a tender hand across his brow.

"I would kill Gourry myself if I had to." Lina said.

Zelgadis stared. Her voice was strong, if unsteady. "I'd try to do it quickly, but if I couldn't, I would do it any way I could. Then I would kill anyone else who was likely to come after him." She trailed off, and smiled sadly. "I'd be too weak and selfish to do anything else."

Zelgadis' breathing hitched as he felt his chest freeze. There was no trace of doubt or hesitation in Lina's eyes, not even a hint that what she said was anything but pure truth. She would destroy herself trying to protect him. Something somewhere snapped and released, and some deep knot unraveled within him. The tension that had plagued him since he'd killed her would-be rapist slipped away and he crushed Lina to him, kissing her franticly. She was as frenzied as he was, wrapping her hands around his face to pull him closer.

He chuckled against her lips and she opened her eyes enough to gaze up at him through her lashes.

"That has to be the sweetest, most romantic, creepiest thing anyone has ever said to me," he managed.

She laughed and pulled him down into bed with her.


End file.
